


The Prism

by RenGoneMad



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, As canon compliant as it can realistically be, Character Study, Developing Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Hatake Kakashi is Bad at Feelings, Hatake Kakashi-centric, M/M, Misunderstandings, Mutual Pining, POV Hatake Kakashi, Pining, Romance, Slow Burn, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:07:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25340614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RenGoneMad/pseuds/RenGoneMad
Summary: The first time the Prism marred Kakashi’s pale skin, he was four years old, and he thought it was a bruise. It was dark blue and purple, cupping his cheek, running down his bicep and ribs to settle on his abdomen. If it weren’t for the way the colors undulated and swirled, migrating across his body in long swathes, Kakashi would have dismissed it as another complication of training.That was the day his father gave him the mask.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 236
Kudos: 732





	1. Red

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter warning: References to minor and canonical character death.
> 
> AU: The Prism appears on your skin wherever your soulmate is touched by another human. Only about 5% of the population have soulmates, and it's more common in chakra-rich populations. If two soulmates touch each other, the colors will appear only at the points of contact. 
> 
> Is this an established AU? I don't know. I loosely based it off of the "your soulmate leaves color wherever they touch" plot. This is a sober, everyone-has-free-will kind of thing, because Kakashi and I reject destiny. 
> 
> This was originally a oneshot for an event, but I didn't get it finished in time, so I kind of expanded and decided to post as is. xD It's fully written and about 30k long. I plan to post MWF, perhaps faster if I feel like it. Any feedback is so incredibly, amazingly appreciated, positive or negative. <3

The first time the Prism marred Kakashi’s pale skin, he was four years old, and he thought it was a bruise. It was dark blue and purple, cupping his cheek, running down his bicep and ribs to settle on his abdomen. If it weren’t for the way the colors undulated and swirled, migrating across his body in long swathes, Kakashi would have dismissed it as another complication of training. 

That was the day his father gave him the mask. Kakashi’s soulmate had just been born, he said, and infants were touched in every conceivable way. Kakashi would be a rainbow of color for the next few years. It was a point of pride and vanity for civilians; a dangerous disruption of camouflage for a shinobi, as well as an advertisement of the greatest potential weakness. As the son of the White Fang, Kakashi was already a target for many. 

There was gravity in Sakumo’s warning. Civilians didn’t realize the complications involved, he said. They were so pleased to be in the five percent of people with a soulmate that they didn’t think of things such as their soulmate being from another country, or even a missing-nin. They didn’t consider the dangers of having a friend press their name into their skin for their soulmate, and the world, to see. So Kakashi would have to take those steps himself. He would have to be wise and strong enough to protect both himself and his soulmate. Kakashi’s life wasn’t just his own.

Kakashi never asked his father if he had a soulmate, but he never saw any color in Sakumo’s pallor. 

Of course, the Prism faded when one soulmate died. 

Sometimes, when his father was gone on a mission and Kakashi had the house to himself, he liked to sit in front of the mirror and watch the Prism bloom. The marks were too-large, huge hands that painted his entire shoulder like an Akimichi gone giant, but that was just because of the difference in scale between Kakashi and his soulmate. His soulmate was tiny, brand new to the world; everything was large on their body, so it was large on Kakashi’s, too. 

By the time he was six, Kakashi was already a soldier. He understood responsibility, and he took it with all the seriousness of a man thrice his age. He liked this one, though. It was more important than guarding random dignitaries or delivering a scroll. Kakashi was the only one who could perform this mission. He was the only one who could protect the tiny, fragile creature that would someday be his. 

After all, Sakumo never said that Kakashi couldn’t go find his soulmate, when they were both old enough. Maybe twelve or so, Kakashi thought. He would just bring his soulmate back to Konoha, if they weren’t in the Land of Fire already. He knew it was possible for foreign shinobi to live in Konoha; there were several families in the village that came from Uzushio, like the Umino and Uzumaki. They would make another exception for Kakashi’s soulmate. People respected Kakashi’s father, and Sakumo always said Kakashi would surpass him. So they would respect him, too. 

When this war was over, Kakashi would find his soulmate. Until then, he would protect them as best he could.

It wasn’t a job for a chūnin; it was a job for _Kakashi_.

So it was fine if he watched the Prism sometimes. As long as he was the only one who could see.

Often, the Prism came in bright oranges that reminded Kakashi of zinnias. Sometimes, it was an emerald green like the forests of Konoha. He didn’t like the blues and purples as much, because they mixed in with his bruises and contusions, the signs of his weaknesses. They reminded Kakashi that the Prism, too, was a weakness.

But it wouldn’t be one for Kakashi. 

Sakumo was right; his soulmate was touched. A lot. If Kakashi noticed the Prism as soon as the kid was born, that would make his soulmate four when Kakashi was eight. And by eight, Kakashi understood death. He wielded it, and he watched it take his comrades. He was helpless to stop it.

Suddenly, having a weak, fragile person to protect didn’t seem so special. Suddenly, he imagined finding his soulmate and watching them die just like Jinu did. Suddenly, he didn’t want another person to protect.

Four years old was too old to be hugging people constantly, Kakashi thought, and having their parents brush their hair. (Or so he presumed from the Prism that sometimes appeared on the tips of his ears and the nape of his neck. And did that mean they had long hair? Was his soulmate a girl?) Four years old was too mature to be holding hands with someone. Too old for the vague shapes of lips on his cheeks and once, Kakashi saw when he took his hitai-ate off for a shower, on his forehead. 

They couldn’t be a shinobi, Kakashi decided. By the time Kakashi was their age, he was learning to slice through tendons. Not asking for a hug.

Or maybe they used a jutsu that required touch. Yeah, that sounded better. Four was too young to be a genjutsu specialist, even with a clan line, but they could be training, or using touch-based ninjutsu. That was easier for Kakashi to understand than the physical affection he saw evidenced on his own flesh. He tried to see the touches in that light, because he couldn’t imagine being paired with someone so weak. His mother had been a strong shinobi in her own right, and though Kakashi didn’t remember her, he had heard stories. Not from his father, but from others, like his jōnin-sensei.

Kakashi’s soulmate would be strong, too. 

_(But his mother still died, didn’t she?)_

Kakashi wondered if his soulmate had ever seen the Prism. People didn’t touch Kakashi very often. Occasionally that weird kid, Might Guy, would tackle him, but there was so little of Kakashi’s bare skin exposed. Just his fingers, toes, eyes, and the little bits around his sleeves. Guy’s jumpsuit covered a lot of his skin, too, so Kakashi’s fingers rarely met flesh. But sometimes, they did. 

Mostly, when he was killing someone.

Tracing the Prism with his own fingers wouldn’t do anything, Kakashi knew. It only worked if another human touched him. Maybe it was initially a way of ensuring fidelity, or perhaps a strange, wide-spread kekkei genkai, as soulmates were far more likely to occur in chakra-rich populations. Some of the older clans, like the Hyuuga and the Aburame, had soulmates twice as often as anyone else. 

But his soulmate’s parents must have noticed by now, even if his soulmate was still too young to understand the flashes of color on their fingers. They would know that Kakashi was out there, somewhere.

And maybe, one day, Kakashi would see a message traced into his soulmate’s skin. As long as only Kakashi saw the name, it wouldn’t be putting them in danger. Someday, they would fight by Kakashi’s side.

When Kakashi’s father died, he stopped taking off his mask to watch the Prism. His parent’s features were reflected on his face more than any color.

When Obito died, he moved to a jōnin apartment and left every mirror behind. He didn’t deserve the comfort this his soulmate’s loved ones gave him.

When Rin died, he switched to long sleeves even in summer, covering every inch of himself as was practical and some besides. If his soulmate was nearby, he didn’t want to risk them seeing. He didn’t want to hurt them, too.

When Minato and Kushina died... he gave up hope. 

After the Kyuubi attack, his soulmate wasn’t touched so much. The kisses on their cheeks stopped appearing, and it seemed like they started brushing their hair themselves, or else cut it short enough not to bother. Kakashi knew his soulmate wasn’t dead, though, because the Prism occasionally swirled around his fingertips. A few times, in the ANBU uniform that didn’t cover quite enough skin, Kakashi saw a hint of color on his bicep, curling around his ANBU tattoo and tinting it lavender. 

At fourteen years old, Kakashi didn’t want a soulmate. He didn’t want to see the Prism. A soulmate was just another person for Kakashi to ruin, if they were even near Konoha to begin with. Another person to betray him if they weren’t.

Kakashi was a killer. He saw crimson all over, but it came with the stench of death. 

It was Obito’s blood. Rin’s blood. An old man who was unwittingly being used to pass on Konoha’s secrets, who died for knowledge he never wanted. A young woman whose name Kakashi never learned, but he knew she was a mother. He knew that she loved butterflies. He knew what her blood felt like, slicking the leather of his gloves. 

If Kakashi weren’t in ANBU, if he wore the fingerless gloves of his jōnin uniform during combat, then his soulmate would have seen the Prism more often. They would have seen when Kakashi’s fingers closed around a neck to snap it in half, or when his hand pierced a genin’s ribcage for no crime other than serving their country, which unfortunately for them just wasn’t the Land of Fire. 

Kakashi wasn’t designed to hug someone. He wasn’t made to brush someone’s hair, or kiss their cheek. 

Rin could have done that. 

Rin never had a soulmate, and Kakashi wondered if it was some horrible mistake of fate, because surely Rin deserved to have someone who matched her, heart and soul. Surely Obito deserved it to be him. Surely, if Rin had seen the Prism on her skin matching Obito’s, she would have realized that Kakashi was the last person in the world she should have loved. 

At fifteen, Kakashi was stripping his glove when he saw thin, deliberate marks appear on his fingers. The stripes of shimmering zinnia formed what looked strangely like kana, almost like the character for—

Kakashi slammed his fist into the brick wall of the ANBU complex. Rust-colored bricks and gray grout were crushed to dust under his knuckles, smothering his soulmate’s message. 

He didn’t move until someone called for the Hound.

Then he slid his gloves over the dust, reattached the braces, and sold his soul once more.

At sixteen, Kakashi had no idea why anyone would think of manufacturing green glitter, much less what someone would do with it. Apparently, others didn’t share the same reservations, because the waiting room outside the Hokage’s office was covered in the stuff. It littered every surface like debris from an explosion. The Hokage’s assistant was the only thing entirely untouched. She was glaring at a genin who was caked head-to-toe, and sweeping inefficiently because the broom’s bristles were just as green as the floor. 

“It really was an accident.” The boy told her, smearing sparkles on his nose as he scratched at a long scar that ran across it. Kakashi imagined his ponytail might be brown, under the emerald shimmer. “I don’t do that stuff anymore. I was just—”

Perhaps getting in through the window would be easier. Kakashi considered it for a moment, but a respect for procedure won out. He used a chakra-infused leap to reach the assistant’s desk, using the back of her chair as a landing pad to somersault over the rest of the room. His boots hit the floor on the very edge of the glittered-perimeter, inches in front of the door to the Hokage’s office. 

There was no need to ask the assistant if he could enter. He could feel the Sandaime’s chakra and no one else’s. He reached for the doorknob with one gloved hand. 

“Hey!” The kid barked, loud enough to startle Kakashi, though he didn’t show it. “You’re just gonna ignore me?”

Pausing, Kakashi looked over his right shoulder.

The kid stared into the eyeholes of his ANBU mask, fists clenched around the broom handle and cheeks flushed a splotchy red. The green stood out worse by contrast. 

Tilting his head slowly, Kakashi tried to place the brat. He was vaguely familiar, but not particularly memorable. It wasn’t until Kakashi factored in the room around them that he figured it out. 

This was the kid he’d heard referred to as the ‘Sandaime’s pet orphan’. He hung around the Tower and sometimes caused a ruckus, though not as much lately. Kakashi, as Hound, had met him once when in the company of his jōnin-sensei, an ex-ANBU named Watanashi. They hadn’t spoken, and Iruka didn’t make an impression. 

The boy was an attention-seeker. Maybe he wanted to talk to an ANBU, maybe he hated Hound, maybe he thought his prank deserved recognition or reprimand. It didn’t really matter. Kakashi was tired and needed to make a report. 

He answered the kid’s question with silence. The door shut heavily behind him. 

When Kakashi was dismissed, he decided to take the window after all.

His jōnin apartment came with a tiny mirror above the bathroom sink. He would have covered it up, broken it, something, but with puberty came the need to shave. No one could care about the five days of stubble his mask covered, but too much growth made the fabric cling strangely to his chin. So he kept his eyes lowered as much as he could and powered through. 

He shaved his chin, his upper lip, sideburns and the fine hairs that prickled at the curve to his throat. The shaving cream was white and opaque, coating silver follicles fully. Kakashi dragged the straight razor down his cheek, hearing the familiar slide of metal against skin, the scrape of hair being cut at the pore. It irritated his ears and set his teeth on edge as the seconds ticked away until he would be done.

One long stroke grazed away the shaving cream, revealing a splash of vivid green. A handprint. 

His fingers jerked, the sharp blade cutting into his jaw. Crimson poured over the mark. 

The colors reminded Kakashi of holly sprigs.

Green glitter on a red flush.

The slice stung, the cream was tinged pink with seeping fluid, but Kakashi couldn’t break his gaze away from the viridian hue that ran down his cheek and blossomed across his lips. 

Holly was poisonous.

Glitter probably was, too.

He waited, counted heartbeats. 

But after twelve rapid clicks, his lips were still green, and the handprint had slipped from his cheek to his throat, spreading down to his collarbone. 

Kakashi was eighteen. Which meant his soulmate was fourteen. And was apparently having their first kiss.

Or, maybe it wasn’t their first. With his mask, Kakashi may have never known if not for inopportune timing. Maybe this was his soulmate’s hundredth time. Maybe they intimately knew every mouth in Konoha, other than Kakashi’s.

If they were in Konoha at all. Probably not. 

Kakashi wadded a triangular bandage against his cheek to stem the bleeding. He felt too warm, his lips tingling although they had never been touched.

Never.

But his soulmate’s had.

A scab began to form, and he turned the shower to cold. Getting in, he sunk to the tiles, clothed back to the icy spray, and closed his eye so he couldn’t see the Prism as it danced across his body. 

He didn’t want to know what his soulmate was doing, if it was going to go any further than a kiss. A sledgehammer was taking out frustration on his ribs, and there was an aching pit in his stomach where he must have swallowed a pound of lead. 

It wasn’t like Kakashi expected his soulmate to wait for him. There was nothing to wait for. Kakashi was never going to find them, deliberately covered his skin even while sleeping so that he wouldn’t see any attempts at making contact. He gave up the idea of a real soulmate years ago. He knew he did. He promised himself he did.

But it hurt. Kakashi burned, and he didn’t know why. 

When he was nineteen, he learned that his soulmate was a shinobi. He was changing in the ANBU locker room, pulling his shirt over his head to replace it with a long-sleeved equivalent, when Tenzō asked in surprise: 

“Is that a countdown?” 

Kakashi’s spine straightened, and he whipped around to follow Tenzō’s line of sight. But it wasn’t an exploding tag, or a bomb, or anything of the sort. He was staring at Kakashi. At Kakashi’s left arm, specifically. Lowering his gaze, Kakashi twisted until he could clearly see his bicep. 

The Prism was jumbled, a muddled blotch of new colors on top of older ones, additional layers being added every second. But they were clearly shinobi hand signs, pressed into his soulmate’s skin. 

_Konoha_ signs. 

His soulmate wasn’t just a shinobi. They were a Konoha shinobi, on a mission. 

Kakashi slammed his locker shut with enough force to make Tenzō jump. 

Later that night, Kakashi sat cross-legged on his bed and watched as the Prism swirled around his abdomen. It wasn’t hand signs anymore, just chaotic, iron-colored splashes around a colorless central stripe, about three inches long. 

A wound. 

His soulmate was injured, and being healed.

Then the colors bled away. 

Kakashi didn’t sleep that night, even after the Prism had been gone for hours. 

He didn’t sleep until just after daybreak, when a splash of yellow marked the soft underbelly of his forearm, directly over a thin blue line that, on Kakashi, was a vein. Someone fiddling with an IV, perhaps. 

His soulmate wasn’t dead. Just stabilized. 

The sun was high in the sky when Kakashi crashed into a nightmare, filled with the Prism, and rust, and his hand punched through the chest of a colored miasma, something that managed to be everyone and no one at once. 

At the age of twenty-two, Kakashi was discharged from ANBU, and he really didn’t know what the fuck to do with himself. The Sandaime wanted him to be a jōnin-sensei, but Kakashi thought that he was the last person in the world who should be teaching children. They were small, and delicate, and there was no longer a war going on that pushed them out the door the second they could throw a shuriken without impaling themselves. 

Still. Kakashi followed orders.

These children were from the baby boom just after the Third Shinobi War, which meant many of them were offspring of prominent clans. In the class Kakashi currently spied on, there was a branch-family Hyuuga, a Nara, an Inuzuka, and one of the orange-haired Yamanakas. He was supposed to be getting the Inuzuka, the Hyuuga, and one civilian-born kid with some talent for genjutsu.

Kakashi would rather go on nothing but solo A- and S-rank missions for the rest of his life than look after these brats, he decided glumly. He had been hiding in a tree on the Academy grounds for the last two hours, occasionally glancing over the much more intriguing pages of _Icha Icha Paradise_ to observe the class. He wasn’t impressed with what he saw.

The students were misbehaved timebombs. Now that they’d graduated, they seemed to think genin orientation was a breeze. They spoke over the teacher or tossed papers at each other, or gum, in at least one case. The sensei had long since given up trying to reign them in. Perhaps she hated children as much as Kakashi did. 

Kakashi was about to slink out of his tree, thinking longingly of leftover soup in his freezer, when the ground shook with a booming voice. 

“ _Naruto_!”

A bright orange blur barreled into the classroom and tried to dive out the window— _’tried’_ being the operative word. He was caught with his ass hanging on the inside when a familiar-looking chūnin grabbed the back of his jacket. 

It quickly became apparent that the chūnin was the owner of the killing intent Kakashi could feel emanating from the room. Every other child went silent, watching the scene with wide eyes. 

“What do you think you’re doing, you brat?” The man shouted, tanned features flushing a red so brilliant it could almost be from the Prism. The ruddy hue accentuated a deep scar that ran across the bridge of his nose and over both cheeks. Kakashi imagined it would scrunch up at the center when he smiled.

“Who the hell are you?” Naruto flailed his arms and legs wildly, but the chūnin held him in the air with surprising strength. “Let go of me, you jerk!”

It seemed Naruto took after Kushina rather than Minato.

“That’s Umino Iruka-sensei to you.” The chūnin growled, a tendon in his jaw flexing as he ground his teeth. “And I’ll let you go after you’ve apologized and cleaned up the mess you made in the teacher’s lounge!”

“Like I’ll ever do that! And it’s not a mess, it’s a work of art!” The whiskers on Naruto’s cheeks stretched as he gave a gap-toothed grin. “I bet you wouldn’t have thought of using umeboshi for that huge mole on the old man’s face!”

That reminded Kakashi of why Iruka was familiar. 

It had been a lot of years since he met a brat covered in green glitter, and Iruka had certainly grown up. 

Very nicely.

Two giggles and a snort erupted from the most rambunctious idiots in the class. Both sounds were aborted the instant Iruka’s head whipped around, eyes narrowed and nostrils flaring like a charging bull. The two girls clapped hands to their mouths and the Inuzuka’s face went white, the tattoos on his cheeks standing out like tomatoes. 

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear any of that.” Iruka’s lips pulled taut into what might have been a smile. One that promised a horrible, painful death filled with thumbscrews and lemon juice and probably many more inventive forms of torture that Kakashi would be impressed by. He was honestly a bit impressed already. The guy was radiating a ridiculous amount of killing intent, but he hadn’t touched a hair on Naruto’s head. “And I’m sure Sayuri-sensei is going to tell me later what wonderful, _professional_ genin you’ve all turned out to be.” 

Shame descended on a few small faces, and even Kakashi had the instinct to sit up straighter and put away his porn. 

He didn’t, of course. But he thought about it. 

Iruka turned around and dragged Naruto into the hallway by his collar. The door shut behind him with an ominous click. 

The students were noticeably well-mannered for the next thirty minutes that Kakashi watched. Then he was chased off the grounds by an overly-enthusiastic jumpsuit with leg warmers. Thoughts of Iruka chased him, too.

Umino Iruka made a lasting impression this time. When Kakashi saw him accepting scrolls in the mission room several weeks later, he looked down at his own messy kana, at the blood and mud on his uniform from a ten-day trek in the woods, and made a point to choose a different line. 

It seemed they had taken directly opposite paths over the years: while Kakashi learned to reject the shinobi code he once held dear, Iruka was teaching others to uphold it.

There had to be some of that rebellious youth left, but it was buried beneath sixty-four layers of _hardass_. 

Maybe Kakashi would antagonize the man some time, when the jōnin wasn’t halfway to collapsing. Turn in a bad report, maybe one with paw prints or sketches, just to see Iruka’s cute face flush around his scar. 

It could be interesting.


	2. Orange

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You are all far too kind. Thank you for your comments, kudos, subscribes, or just reading. <3 The support in this fandom is truly amazing. 
> 
> There will be a few book titles mentioned in this story, all of which (as far as I'm aware) come from my mind and don't exist in reality. Although I'm sure we would all be terribly excited to read _A History of Civilian Techniques for Watchstanding on Merchant Ships_.

Umino Iruka didn’t exactly invade Kakashi’s thoughts throughout the next few weeks, but Kakashi remembered he existed a few times—which was more than he could say for most of those still living. 

When he went to turn in a mission report and noticed a neat brown ponytail, he glanced at his scroll with a more critical eye. It was four days late, a little messy, and he hadn’t bothered to fill in one auxiliary section, but it was acceptable by his own standards. It conveyed all the necessary information with succinct precision, regardless of the bells and whistles. Most of the mission desk staff wouldn’t look at it twice.

It was the perfect test. 

Only two chūnin were on duty, and Iruka’s line was one person longer than his coworker’s. Hanging back, Kakashi leaned against the wall beside the couches and pretended to read. 

Iruka screamed efficiency, the kind to dot the I’s and cross the T’s with enough force to puncture paper. He accepted two reports with a pleasant smile and a “Thank you for your hard work”, but then gave a sharp rebuke to an older tokubetsu for trying to turn in one so wet the ink ran. In a remarkable show of persuasive competence, he eked out an agreement for her to write a new one, without devolving into a shouting match. 

When a brand-new chūnin stepped up with a scroll that, even from Kakashi’s position across the room, he could tell was scant in words and large in holes, he expected Iruka to blow a gasket. 

He didn’t. 

Taking the report, Iruka looked between it and the gangly teenager a few times, then flipped it around on the desk. He grabbed a blank scroll, handed the chūnin a pen, and patiently explained what _should_ have gone in each section, reading upside down as the kid wrote so he could make fine corrections. Gentle questions pulled out pertinent information, and Iruka corrected the terminology in places where the kid tried to sound more experienced than he was and fucked up as a result.

Fifteen minutes later, Iruka had a stunning report to file, and the chūnin had knowledge that might actually stick until the end of the next mission. 

A mumbled thanks was Iruka’s only reward, but he beamed as if he’d been gifted a kunai that could never be dulled. 

Kakashi wondered what it would take for _him_ to be the cause of that smile. 

Probably not what he was about to do. 

Slipping _Icha Icha Paradise_ into his pouch, Kakashi affected a casual slouch and approached the desk. 

“Welcome back, jōnin-san.” Iruka greeted politely, reaching out for the report. Kakashi was well practiced in the art of passing items without touching, so their fingers never brushed. 

“Busy evening?”

“Not due to numbers.” Iruka sighed, unrolling the scroll and skimming it from the top down. “More Konoha shinobi passed this chūnin exam than usual, so there are a lot of new faces that don’t know the first thing about proper documentation.” His brows and lips drew down in relationship with his progress on the report. His eyes narrowed. “Which seems to apply to you, but somehow, I don’t think you were a genin last month.” 

“Not exactly.” Kakashi curved his eye into a happy arch. He had seen enough to get an idea for what would rankle Iruka’s feathers the most. It was a happy coincidence that ‘lazy jōnin slacker’ was already part of his questionable charm. “You see, I was going to turn it in days ago, but there was a nest of baby birds just outside my window. I couldn’t leave until they flew out into the big wide world.” 

Muscles twitched all over Iruka’s face, bits and pieces of reactions that were so equally matched that they blocked the corridor, leaving his expression strangely blank. “Assuming this _solo A-rank_ you’re turning in doesn’t suggest you can catch a nest before it falls, why didn’t you use the door?”

Kakashi blinked. “Ah!” He tapped his fist to his palm in revelation. “I knew I was forgetting something.” 

Iruka incredulity and irritation brought capillaries to the surface of Iruka’s cheeks, but for some reason he didn’t take the bait. He gritted his teeth, slammed the “accepted” stamp on the report with undue violence, and glared up at Kakashi. “Consider this a one-time pass. Either do your work correctly or come up with a better excuse.” 

“Thank you, chūnin-san. I’ll be sure to do that.” Kakashi grinned and walked out before Iruka could ask which one he meant. 

He may not have gotten a smile, but he felt damn near giddy nonetheless.

Any leniency Iruka had granted him due to his recently evicted-from-ANBU status (as anyone could guess, given that he was a jōnin who hadn’t turned in a report to the mission desk in the last decade) was gone by their fourth meeting. Kakashi thought it would be the crumpled edges or the fine droplets of mud along the right margin that would incite Iruka’s ire. He was wrong.

He had already decided to grind through Iruka’s stringent layers with high-grit sandpaper, taking his time and adding little doses of annoyance at a time until he reached the center. Whether that center would be rage or humor, Kakashi had yet to determine. His smiley-faces-instead-of-periods and a scroll starched so straight it wouldn’t roll had only scratched a few inches under the blustery surface.

Quite unintentionally, with that fourth report, Kakashi’s sandpaper was backed by the impact and velocity of a cannonball. 

“—and if you’re willing to delay your own paycheck by a week then _fine_ , no one gives a damn, but not everyone gets pay from A-rank missions on a regular basis. When you’re the leader of a team—”

There had been two chūnin and a tokubetsu on Kakashi’s team this time. Iruka must have known one of them, perhaps well enough to know their financial difficulties, because Kakashi couldn’t imagine this level of reaction unless the perceived insult hit close to home. The teacher also seemed like the type to rise to the defense of others more than himself, and he was rising like a demon out of hell.

Iruka’s scar was nearly blotted out by splotchy red. He stood with palms flat on the desk, his voice rose at least a few decibels above the line of socially acceptable, and he didn’t seem to notice that a few stray hairs had come out of his ponytail and were frizzing around his face, reminiscent of a bristling cat. 

A strange mix of fascination and genuine irritation broiled in Kakashi’s gut. 

While Iruka’s furor propelled him to greater heights of expression, Kakashi’s locked him down. His hands shoved deep in his pockets, his slouch stiffened, and he watched Iruka with a passivity that apparently abraded Iruka’s senses as much as the six-day late report. 

Iruka didn’t taper to an end, but rather bit at it with gnawing teeth, glaring at Kakashi for all his deep brown eyes were worth. Which was enough that Kakashi couldn’t look away. Iruka crossed his arms over his chest and, if possible, darkened his scowl. “So what’s your excuse this time?”

Kakashi had one prepared when he walked up, but that was before Iruka derided him for “dismissing his team” and drew the unobtrusive attention of every shinobi in the room.

If there was one thing Kakashi _wasn’t_ , it was a careless leader. But normally, the insinuation wouldn’t even rankle. 

For some reason, coming from Iruka, it did.

He took a step forward until his toes lined up with the edge of the desk. Iruka’s back straightened minutely, as if expecting an attack, when Kakashi raised a hand. The jōnin pulled the scroll towards him on the desk, trailed two fingers down the center, and tapped a small box in the top-right.

Iruka didn’t watch the action. His gaze remained locked on Kakashi’s. 

He waited dispassionately until Iruka finally looked down, frowning as he skimmed the indicated section. 

Full lips formed around silent numbers. A code indicating the scroll was a follow-up to a report previously filed by a lower rank. It wasn’t often needed, unless the mission commander was incapacitated or dead.

Embarrassment might have looked cute on Iruka in another situation.

“You—why didn’t you say you were in the hospital?” 

Kakashi shrugged with feigned indifference. “You looked like you needed to relieve some stress.”

Iruka’s mouth opened, outrage and mortification turning him purple, but Kakashi was more tired than he thought. He turned towards the door and gave a lazy wave over his shoulder. “Well, I’ll pick up a mission in the morning. Have a good night, sensei.”

Maybe Kakashi needed a new tactic. Seeing Iruka riled up was fun, but something about that encounter sat wrong behind his sternum. A hexagonal puzzle piece when he was looking for a square. Too many edges. 

He didn’t want to see the rage-filled center. He realized, suddenly, that he wanted to see the softer one.

Iruka had a book. 

Or, that was what Kakashi thought at first. 

As it turned out, the Jōnin Standby Station, which Kakashi had never had cause to use while in ANBU, had an excellent view of the Academy. While Iruka’s classroom was at an unfortunate angle that he couldn’t see into without hanging off the corner of the roof, Iruka had a habit of taking the children outside for lunch, letting the boys run off their excess energy, the girls gossip, and Iruka to eat his bento in relative peace, so long as a fight didn’t break out. 

After eating and keeping an eagle-eye on the little bastards in his care, Iruka would spend the last ten or fifteen minutes reading _A History of Civilian Techniques for Watchstanding on Merchant Ships_ , which was possibly the most boring title and topic ever conceived to a young pre-shinobi. 

That was likely the point.

In reality, it was a clever disguise for several books. Kakashi noticed it first when Iruka had nearly finished the tome on Wednesday, then skipped back to the beginning on Thursday. Four days later, the book lost a good half-inch of thickness, and Kakashi’s suspicion grew into a certainty. 

Umino Iruka was hiding something naughty within that boring, uptight exterior. 

Oh, and the dust-jacket was a ruse, too. 

The problem was getting close enough to read the text. The sharingan was woefully inferior to the Byakugan when it came to telescopic vision, and since the material changed regularly, simply stealing the book once wouldn’t be enough to reveal Iruka’s true secrets.

Why Kakashi needed to learn those secrets… well, that wasn’t important. He was a shinobi; information gathering was in his nature. And Iruka was a unique case. It was the chūnin’s fault, really; everyone knew that the first step to hiding something was to make it seem as though there was nothing to hide at all. Iruka was practically shoving temptation in Kakashi’s face like a Uchiha cat summons in front of his ninken. 

Of course, that curiosity had gotten Ūhei scratched to hell and back, but… 

While Iruka’s ire might be just as violent, it was sure to be a hell of a lot more interesting.

_(And maybe, just maybe, this would give him the ammunition he needed to capture that most elusive creature: civil conversation.)_

Using ANBU-level camouflage would clearly be cheating. His target was a chūnin, so he would stick to A-rank jutsus and below to give Iruka a fighting chance. Of course, he wouldn’t be giving Iruka the advantage of alerting him to the _existence_ of the challenge, but that was part of being a shinobi. Ambush and subterfuge. 

The first step was observation. Iruka carried the book(s) in his satchel when out and about, and Kakashi drew the line at breaking into his home. Even he could admit that would be going too far for an idle curiosity. During class and the mission room, the book was tucked respectively in and under his desks. None of that was impossible to work around, but without breaking any laws, it would be easier to find a way to observe while Iruka was actively reading, particularly since he might have to wait for a few new novels to find one of particular interest (read: porn). 

Shadow clones came naturally to Kakashi. The chakra drain of the sharingan meant that he didn’t have the stamina to hold them for very long, but he used them or elemental varieties often to gauge an opponent’s location or abilities. Shadow clones reflected the Prism accurately whilst other clones didn’t, so they served different but equally useful purposes. Transformation jutsu, by contrast, he rarely used, but he was nonetheless adept. Combining the two seemed to be the safest bet. 

He _could_ transform himself into a squirrel and wait in the tree below which Iruka sat, but that would require either remaining transformed for a potentially lengthy period of time, or risk bringing attention to himself when he arrived and escaped. If he used a shadow clone, they could dissipate as soon as they obtained the information, or if they were unduly noticed, reducing both risk and chakra strain over the length of the mission, despite the additional jutsu. 

If Kakashi’s ninken ever learned he had transformed into a squirrel to spy on a mission-desk chūnin, they would never respect him again.

It was a few weeks before Kakashi had free time in Konoha combined with chakra to spare, but eventually he managed. He remained on watch in the Jōnin Standby Station while his clone did the work. When it dispersed, images and sensory memories stumbled into him like a bag of dried beans spilling into a scale, too much all at once. 

The mission was successful. Although he never caught the title, he saw enough over Iruka’s shoulder to get the gist. At least for the day, Iruka was reading…

A field-treatment guide for naturally-occuring toxins in the Land of Fire. 

That was... 

...disappointing.

Two days later, it was a fictional novel. The main character seemed to be the foolish guard of a tyrannical king. At one point, Iruka muttered to himself, “You’re running _towards_ the incursion? Are you an idiot? That’s what the perimeter guard is for. You need to disengage and secure the queen. Who the hell wrote these procedures?”

One week later, it was a book of short poetry. Iruka didn’t speak during that, but his facial expressions were entertaining enough that Kakashi wasted far too much chakra watching, so he wasn’t able to go back the next day. That was frustrating not only for the Iruka-Time he was missing, but also because he was starting to wonder if Iruka knew he was lurking and was making fun of him by grabbing random books from the library. 

Kakashi couldn’t deny the thrill that ran through him at that, even if it meant his plans were being thwarted. The idea of Iruka purposefully toying with him was strangely appealing.

It was almost three weeks before Kakashi spied again. His clone crawled up the trunk, tiny claws gripping rough bark. The squirrel form didn’t come easily to him, and his hind legs slipped a few times, but he made it up without raising any alarm. 

Or so he thought. 

A flash of chakra burned his tiny nerves and a transparent red dome surrounded him. The clone squeaked, falling back on his furry ass and bending his tail painfully. He looked up to see Iruka rising from his seated position, book closed in his hand and peering into the dome with a look of caution. 

After a moment, Iruka grinned in triumph.

In general, the smaller the mammal, the faster the heart rate. Kakashi knew squirrels could go upwards of three-hundred beats per minute on a normal day. 

The stretch of Iruka’s lips and the light in his eyes sent Kakashi’s to about twice that.

“Aha! I finally got you!” He leaned forward, eyes narrowing assessingly. “Now, are you a summons or a henge?” He raised his hands, but before he could perform a seal, Kakashi’s clone dissipated with a pop. 

In the Jōnin Standby Station, Kakashi chuckled, watching Iruka glare at the tree for a minute before reluctantly dissipating the seal when one of the female students approached. 

His pulse beat a rapid rhythm to the memory of that victorious smile.

_That_ was the piece, the square, with exactly edges enough. 

It fit perfectly in his chest, nestling in the tender space behind his heart.

Unfortunately, he didn’t get to see it again.

A couple weeks later, the fourth book was a text on combating psycho-social issues in adolescent orphans. 

Uchiha Sasuke sat alone on the roof of the school, picking at a storebought bento. Iruka glanced up at him regularly, concern etched deeper than his scar, and skimmed through the pages, too distracted to notice the chakra-rich squirrel above him. 

Uchiha Sasuke, the little brother of Kakashi’s former subordinate.

Uchiha Sasuke, Obito’s cousin.

Uchiha Sasuke, the last of Obito’s clan left in Konoha.

Uchiha Sasuke, the only survivor of a massacre that could have been prevented if anyone, Kakashi included, had seen what truly lay within Itachi’s heart.

He took a break from spying after that.

Boredom was the deadliest enemy of all, and Kakashi blamed it entirely for the downward spiral that followed.

He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that his fixation on the chūnin was mostly a matter of convenience. 

Umino Iruka was _safe_. 

Iruka didn’t care about Kakashi. There was annoyance or frustration when Kakashi provoked him, sure, but he didn’t actually _care_. His gaze slid past Kakashi on the street without notice. He never asked about Kakashi’s day, or his latest injury, had never even said his name. If Kakashi died, Iruka would hear about it and perhaps think once or twice about the lazy jōnin that tried to get away with bad reports, but it wouldn’t affect him, not really. It wouldn’t leave a scar. It wouldn’t rip through his heart like lightning.

And if Kakashi lived, Iruka was _there_. When Kakashi came from an eight-day A-rank, Iruka was eating his bento and reading his mysterious book, as predictable as the seasons. Iruka had one of the safest jobs an active shinobi could have. And Kakashi couldn’t lose Iruka anyway, because Iruka wasn’t his to begin with. He could watch those smiles whenever he was in Konoha, but he didn’t have to bear the burden of responsibility for them. If those smiles ever ceased to exist, it wouldn’t be Kakashi’s fault. 

And best of all, Kakashi never saw the Prism marr Iruka’s bared flesh.

It wasn’t love. Not even close. Infatuation would have been a stretch. He had no intention of ever acting on his interest, after all, even if by some strange twist Iruka was the type of person who saw a thin line between rage and lust. But it was something to do, something he could rely on, without taking any personal risks. Kakashi took enough risks for Konoha every day—he didn’t need any more of his own.

The next time Kakashi watched three likely-to-fail genin, his tree just so happened to have both an excellent view through the window of their classroom, as well as the nine-year-olds that were practicing throwing kunai in the courtyard. 

That was when Kakashi determined that teachers really did have eyes in the back of their heads, because there was no other way Iruka could avert disaster a million times over in the span of ten-minutes. Unless he was a Hyuuga in disguise, using the Byakugan to keep watch over the stray weapons flying through the air like sadistic seagulls. Kakashi counted no less than four times when Iruka saved a student from certain mangling by blocking a kunai with his own, or in one case, pulling a pink-haired idiot out of the way when she spent too long oggling the last Uchiha to notice she had stepped in front of the targets. Iruka closed a hand around her arm and she was back in the safety zone before she even realized what happened. 

Kakashi’s fingertips splashed sapphire blue as he turned a page in _Icha Icha Violence_.

Five minutes later, Iruka covered a tiny hand with his own, demonstrating the proper hold of the kunai and how to release it so it actually flew in the _right fucking direction_. Kids these days. Iruka seemed to have endless patience for ignorance—it was only wilful disruption or apathy that caused him to lose his temper, and Kakashi was a master of the latter.

His fingers stained seafoam green. 

He lost focus of the class he had come to watch in favor of observing Iruka’s. 

When Iruka smacked Naruto on the back of the head for trying to aim at the Uchiha, Kakashi’s fingers turned orange. 

He leaned forward. His book slowly lowered to his lap, forgotten. 

Iruka took a bent kunai from the rambunctious Inuzuka. Kakashi’s fingerprints were outlined in pink.

His pulse pounded in his throat. 

It was when Iruka redid a little girl’s french braid for her, with deft hands and calming words about how she looked just as good with two inches missing, that Kakashi knew for certain. 

He stripped off his gloves and watched as his knuckles turned rich, nutty brown, while Iruka twisted off the braid at the nape of her neck. 

Five minutes later, Kakashi rolled under the covers, fully clothed, and stared up at his off-white ceiling, fists clenched tight against his chest. Rage soaked into his muscles through every vein, his pulse a furious war drum in his ears, not from attraction or excitement.

Iruka was about four years younger than Kakashi. He was a Kyuubi orphan. He was a Konoha shinobi, active duty around the time the countdown appeared. He had long hair, and was open, and kind, and so beautiful that of course someone couldn’t help but kiss him at fourteen.

Kakashi had been _tricked_. 

Betrayed. 

Seduced. 

For over half of his life he had done everything possible to prevent finding his soulmate. He wore a mask, he avoided his reflection, denying every sense of his physical self beyond the bare necessities to make him the perfect weapon for someone else to wield. All so that he, and his mate, would be protected. From others, from each other. 

And the first person that Kakashi had felt more than simple lust towards turned out to be the last person in the world he ever wanted to meet. Any chance of forming something with Iruka, even a friendship, had been stolen from him by the Prism. By biology or fate or gods or whatever it was that controlled their lives. 

Perhaps Kakashi had never wanted Iruka at all. Perhaps his interest, his fascination, was a product of this connection. Perhaps it was never in his control, and Kakashi had merely rationalized it as _safety_ and _boredom_ to justify what he felt. 

But… 

A doubt niggled at his mind.

Kakashi hadn’t wanted Iruka at first. Not as children. He had never given Iruka a second thought until that day with Minato’s son. And Iruka didn’t seem to care for Kakashi in the least. Kakashi had estimated his chances of seducing Iruka (not that he ever intended to _do_ it, but he was a curious person, of course he had considered the odds and methods of success) to be less than ten percent, taking into account that he had no clue if Iruka was even interested in men. If he was, Kakashi bumped the percent to a slightly more comfortable fifteen. 

And that wasn’t even considering something beyond one night, because Kakashi could have never done that, not even in his fantasies.

So perhaps Iruka was immune to the lure of the Prism. Maybe Kakashi was just weak, or his personal flaws made him so utterly undesirable that not even the Prism could undo their damage. 

It didn’t matter, did it? Kakashi knew what he had to do now. His cool spring water had been polluted, his safety breached, the one good thing that had happened to him in years snatched away by something beyond their control.

Now, Iruka was danger incarnate. 

How close had they come to touching, when Kakashi bent over the desk to tap the form? How close had he come to destroying everything he had worked for, all because of a pretty smile?

Kakashi didn’t want a soulmate. 

He definitely didn’t want one that was all brash shouts and interesting scars and long hair and dimpled cheeks and a _chūnin_. He didn’t want one that was so open, so vulnerable, so easy to crush if he were ever listed in the Bingo Books under _Hatake Kakashi Weaknesses: Soulmate_. He didn’t want someone bright and warm to everyone but Kakashi, who casually touched people as if he didn’t care what his soulmate saw, as if he didn’t realize how Kakashi’s mask had fused with his person over the years until it was just as much a part of him as any limb, all because of the Prism. 

No, Kakashi didn’t want a soulmate. 

He didn’t regret that decision.

But…

_Damn it._

He might miss Iruka.


	3. Yellow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: NSFW and possible dub-con elements. It's not _actual_ dub-con, so I'm not tagging it. Neither party has any reason to believe they might be emotionally harming the other, and no one is physically touched in any way. But the emotional reaction is similar enough at first, that I am issuing a trigger warning. I'm putting a more detailed description in the end notes, so if you feel you might have trouble with the situation and want further information to decide if you should read it or not, please skip straight to the end note. Included there is also information for how to skip that section if you so choose. 
> 
> This is probably the angsiest chapter, and the main reason for the M rating. I promise things get better from here. ^_^"

Kakashi had never requested an audience with the Hokage before. It seemed strange, given his long and illustrious career, but the Hokages had always needed Kakashi—not the other way around. He was in ANBU under the Yondaime and Sandaime, meaning either they called on him, or whatever he had to say was pressing enough that he tracked them down without question. Now, Kakashi requested. He waited two days and then an awkward two hours reading _Icha Icha Violence_ in the secretary’s room (which was much less interesting this time, devoid as it was of green glitter) until the Hokage was ready to see him. 

Kakashi shut the door behind him. 

“This is a pleasant surprise, Kakashi.” Hiruzen puffed on his pipe, smoke rising to the ceiling in a gentle wave. “Here I was beginning to think you would never take me up on my offer for tea.” 

Inclining his head in a bow, Kakashi replied levelly. “Thank you for seeing me, Hokage-sama, but I’m not here for a social call.”

“And yet, I find myself inclined to make it one. Sit.” He waved a wizened hand to the chair opposite his desk, and Kakashi could find no acceptable reason to refuse. 

He sat in uncomfortable silence while Hiruzen poured a second cup.

The tea was good. Strong. It slipped down his throat and remained unsettled in his belly. If it were milk, his churning stomach would have formed it into butter. Hiruzen didn’t attempt to look, but Kakashi raised his mask back after drinking nonetheless, his skin prickling with every moment of exposure.

“Let’s get business out of the way first. What’s troubling you?”

“I have information to report.” 

“Non-critical, or else you wouldn't have waited.”

Kakashi steeled his nerves against the fraying that threatened to strip them clean. “I’m here because of Rule 19 of the shinobi code.”

The Sandaime raised his brows. He slowly pulled the pipe from his lips, observing Kakashi with keen eyes. “When did you learn?”

“Three days ago.” 

The name was thick on Kakashi’s tongue, sticking to his tongue and fighting not to be set loose. But Kakashi’s first duty was to his Hokage, and the rules were in place for a reason, even if Kakashi could no longer adhere to some of them. He forced it past unwilling teeth.

“It’s Umino Iruka.”

No surprise showed on the Sandaime’s face, but the old man was wily. Kakashi had long since learned that he couldn’t see beneath whatever surface Hiruzen chose to reflect. 

“You were right to make me aware of it, of course, but I see no issue that should cause you concern. Iruka is unlikely to come under your direct command, and he has access to the paperwork required to update both of your contact information.” 

“Iruka-sensei is unaware of the origin of his Prism. I would prefer to keep it that way.”

There was a beat of silence. The Sandaime’s eyes narrowed. “You haven’t spoken to him regarding this.”

“No, Hokage-sama.”

“You don’t believe it’s his right to know?”

They were shinobi. ‘Right to know’ rarely factored into the equation. But Kakashi chose a more diplomatic approach in his answer. “There are several shinobi who never learn their soulmate’s identity. In this case, the knowledge would only be painful.”

The Sandaime hummed. “You might be surprised. Umino Iruka is not someone I would dare to predict, but I’m certain he wouldn’t thank you for withholding the information.”

“His thanks isn’t what I’m concerned with. I’m not asking you to lie, Hokage-sama, but if it doesn’t become a matter of Konoha’s security, I don’t see why he has to be told. You know the risks associated with active-duty shinobi and the Prism. And the communication benefits are negligible. I most often operate alone meaning I wouldn’t be able to use the Prism myself, my ninken are capable of delivering messages, and Iruka-sensei rarely takes missions outside the Land of Fire. ”

The Hokage nodded, but Kakashi thought it was more in contemplation than agreement. “All true. I am not questioning your logic, Kakashi. Merely your assumption of what would adversely affect his well-being.”

“I don’t think it’s much of an assumption to say that no one wants to find their soulmate, only to be rejected.” Kakashi wished he still had his ANBU mask to hide behind. The cloth one sometimes just didn’t seem like enough. Hiruzen always had an uncanny knack to see precisely what people didn’t want him to the most. Kakashi set his teacup on the desk, unfinished. “I haven’t made this decision lightly.”

“I’m afraid you haven’t taken a decision lightly since Sakumo was still alive.” Hiruzen sighed, inaudible but evident in the slope of his shoulders and the smoke that escaped between his teeth. He chewed on the dark wood of his pipe for several tense moments. “I will respect your choice, although I encourage you to reconsider.”

Kakashi’s relief was more warming than the tea. The knots in his gut began to untwist. 

There was no doubt Hiruzen would tell Iruka if necessary—if Kakashi went AWOL and confirmation of his life was necessary, for example. Hiruzen didn’t have to warn him of that. But this gave Kakashi time. 

Perhaps he would die before it ever came to light. The life of a shinobi was never purported to be long.

“Thank you, Hokage-sama.”

“Now, we can move on to other matters. I hear you failed another genin team yesterday.”

Avoiding Iruka was far from the hardest thing Kakashi had ever done, and for the first year, he labelled it a tentative success, pending future confirmation. 

Iruka’s gaze sometimes followed him when he chose a different line at the mission desk, a faint frown on his features, but they never spoke. Kakashi sat on the other end of the Jōnin Standby Room, although it meant he had to get up to refill his coffee. He went into genin assessments blind rather than watch at the Academy. He even changed his path to avoid walking past _Ichiraku’s_ , after recognizing Iruka’s unhealthy relationship with ramen—one the teacher was kind enough to share with Naruto out of his own wallet.

If Kakashi ever needed additional confirmation that such stringent measures against his soulmate were necessary, it was that—along with the Prism that betrayed every guiding hand, every comforting touch, every honest affection. 

Kakashi wasn’t made to withstand that sort of onslaught. It would rip him apart, and he would take Iruka with him.

So he thought about Iruka occasionally, when chartreuse striped his skin or he caught sight of a ponytail or he glanced at his own bookcase and wondered what graced Iruka’s, if he had changed out that dust-jacket for another equally dull one, because the students would figure it out eventually if he kept the same boring text for years on end. 

But he didn’t act on those thoughts. 

He couldn’t grow to love someone he didn’t know.

Whatever tender feelings he had been in danger of developing, he poured over with cement, smothering the young green sprouts, blocking out the sun and water they needed to thrive. 

After nearly a year, Kakashi thought his affections were almost ready to die entirely, that Iruka was nothing more than a passing fancy that would soon, as described, _pass_.

The tenacity of all living creatures in pursuit of survival should never be underestimated. 

When Kakashi was twenty-four years old, Iruka gained a lover. 

It probably took Kakashi a while to notice. His mission to avoid Iruka was ongoing.

But he couldn’t avoid himself. 

Water ran in rivulets down his spine, soothing mission-sore muscles. It warmed his blood and made him languid, relaxed for the first time in weeks. He lathered his hair for an indulgent two minutes, then watched the suds as they swirled around his feet. 

His feet, which were _teal_. 

They weren’t the sort of individual trails that fingers made, and when Kakashi lifted his foot, he saw that the sole remained uncolored.

The Prism continued to migrate, trailing up the inside of Kakashi’s calves, between his knees and thighs. Sparse silver hairs interrupted midnight blue like so many stars. 

Then Kakashi saw the handprints on his chest, ambiguous enough to be from a man or a woman. They trailed down his sternum, left smears across the plane of his abdominals, and finally came to rest in the vee of his pelvis. 

It was beyond strange, seeing his dick swirled in a dark purple hue. Kakashi took a long moment to stare before he shut off the water, squeezing closed his eye so hard that harsh spots of color welled behind his lids, an tenacious echo of the Prism that he wanted nothing more than to shut out.

Iruka was having sex. 

_(With someone else.)_

Kakashi swallowed painfully hard. The humid air in the shower was suddenly oppressive, heavy and sticky in his lungs. He stumbled out, leaving wet footprints on the floor as he crossed to his bed. He sat and pulled his knees defensively up to his chest, but all that did was put into his line of sight the vibrant swatches of color on his legs. It was _everywhere_. 

Kakashi’s dripping hair formed a damp spot in the center of his comforter. 

He should get dressed and turn off the lights, slide under the sheets, ignore everything. 

But his soulmate was no longer unknown, no longer merely theoretical.

Now, the Prism was very, very real, accompanied by physical sensations and sharp pangs that twisted his innards with vicious strength.

 _Iruka_ was having sex. Being touched.

Kakashi’s skin drew hot and tight. His muscles tingled and blood rushed through his ears. The inescapable knowledge worked at him like a shitty genjutsu, assaulting some senses while leaving others intact. He could feel, but he couldn’t see. He could hear his own harsh breathing, but not those of whoever touched him.

Covering his left eye with his hand and opening his right, Kakashi watched the myriad of colors as they shifted on his thighs. 

It was only his imagination. The Prism couldn’t cause sensory distortion. That was all Kakashi’s doing.

No one was touching him, no one could see him here, with curtains drawn, doors shut, wards raised, but—he couldn’t block it out. 

The intense, disgusting feeling of being _exposed_.

He was being held down by so many hands. They were penetrating every inch of his body, the body that he had never shown to anyone when he was conscious enough to avoid it. He could feel dry palms and scraping nails and unbearable heat, echoing with torturous clarity in his mind as the Prism traced him like eyes and fingers and—

No. 

He shouldn’t feel that way. 

He wasn’t being violated. 

It wasn’t Kakashi being touched. It wasn’t Kakashi’s thighs being spread apart to accommodate a living person.

It was Iruka. 

That was right. Iruka. It was Iruka. If he forgot about the person doing this to him—them— _Iruka_ , if he focused on what Iruka would be feeling…

 _Iruka_ was willing, after all. There were no signs that he was pinned, no colors around Kakashi’s wrists. His palms were soaked in cyan along with his own sweat. Evenly, like Iruka was learning his lover intimately, pressing them to him.

Iruka would be enjoying this.

Kakashi wanted it to be over quickly, but it wasn’t. Minutes passed and he grew fixated, latching on to an imaginary scene. 

Where was Iruka touching them?

Iruka would be pleasing his partner. He would be trying to make them feel as good as he did. Because it was Iruka, and someone Iruka cared about. 

Not Kakashi. 

But _Iruka_.

It was stupid. It was masochistic. It was a result of too long without good sleep, too many nights in the cold branches of trees stripped bare by winter, too long shutting out ideas about the man he didn’t want to want. 

That was what Kakashi told himself as he formed shaky seals. A clone of himself, fully clothed, appeared in front of him. It gave him an unreadable look (what did it mean that Kakashi didn’t know what he himself was thinking?) and made seals of its own. The transformation jutsu took hold, and suddenly, Kakashi was looking into a floor-length mirror. 

He hadn’t seen himself in utter nudity for… many, many years. Nearly twenty, he thought. He didn’t really look now. 

He saw silver hair darkened to steel and clinging to naturally flushed cheeks, saw the fine scars that littered his torso and decorated lean, corded muscles. 

He saw all of that. But what he looked at was the Prism. 

He imagined what the colors would look like on smooth, tanned flesh. Imagined that the sweat on his palms was gathered from Iruka’s heat. Imagined that the unbearable sensation of being flayed alive and put on display was tolerable, was bearable, because it was Iruka doing it. 

The Prism shifted constantly, reacting to the dynamic natures of the partners in the act. Neither of which was Kakashi, he reminded himself. 

Was that purely a comfort, or a cruelty as well? 

Either way, it didn’t stop the interest from gathering in his groin, growing as he imagined Iruka beneath the brilliant hues. 

Iruka, who was being showered with significant attention on his nipples. Iruka, who must have shifted positions, because the Prism migrated to the outside of his thighs and crossed with a center splotch to form a bright heart-shape on his pelvis. Iruka, who must have been on his back while his lover rode him, Iruka who buried within him or her, taking pleasure in their body. He imagined Iruka’s head thrown back in ecstasy, dark hair splayed across a pillow as he clutched his lover’s hips. 

Kakashi panted, one hand fisting in the sheets while his other twisted around his own length. 

He wondered how Iruka sounded. 

His mouth was a stunning amber, vivid like lipstick. He imagined that Iruka loved kissing, imagined finding that out for himself, imagined that Iruka was moaning against Kakashi’s lips as Kakashi rode him. Imagined a broad hand circling Kakashi, touching him while Iruka’s eyes squeezed shut and his lips parted in the heights of ecstasy. 

Heat spilled over Kakashi’s fist. His hips jerked uselessly, seeking to bury himself in someone that wasn’t there. Would never be there. 

His clone dissipated, and one image was imprinted in his mind forever: 

Kakashi, streaked in blues and greens and oranges and pinks, a lovely, happy work of art—and his own sticky white shame marring the masterpiece, like claw marks tearing up canvas and showing the blank, ugly wall behind. 

That was when Kakashi started to hate his soulmate.

Or, he tried to. 

If the flowers wouldn’t die from suffocation, he would poison them himself. 

Kakashi had never been touched with true intimacy. He had never kissed. He had never been held while he slept. He had never had sex. One weird, hastily-forgotten and adrenaline-fueled dry hump with Guy when they were teenagers didn’t count, and they had both expunged it from their brains the instant it was done.

Oh, he had been _approached_ for sex more times than he cared to remember, going back to when he had barely passed puberty. No one in ANBU could be considered a child, after all, regardless of chronological age. But though Kakashi had sometimes been tempted, he had never done it. Never allowed anyone to touch him beneath his clothes, never sought out a carnal connection of his own. Not because he was a romantic, or because he didn’t have the basic physical desire for it—he certainly did. 

It was because the idea of his soulmate seeing the Prism in their most intimate spots, knowing someone was touching Kakashi, knowing exactly what Kakashi was doing in his most defenseless moments, was too much to bear. It felt like being scoured by a windstorm in Suna, sand whipping around him, embedding into his skin and burning his eyes and building grit in his mouth. It made him want to use an Earth jutsu, dive into the ground and stay here, buried beneath hundreds of pounds of cool dirt, laying among the worms and beetles that could care less for his existence if he was too alive to eat. He would rather stab himself with a kunai and perform the field stitches himself, one-handed, no anesthetic provided, than allow someone to see him that way. 

Weak. Vulnerable. Exposed.

Kakashi thought of changing all of that. He knew his aversion to touch was stronger than most, even those fellow shinobi with the Prism, like Tsunade of the Sannin, or Namiashi Raidō. Hell, Kakashi’s defensive walls were as solid as an Aburame’s, and he cloaked just as much of his body as one. 

Things were different now, though. He knew his soulmate. He knew Iruka didn’t give a damn if he slept with someone, because Iruka had, too. He would even be able to plan it out if he wanted, choose a time and day when Iruka would be working the mission desk or teaching, unable to leave to check how far down the Prism went. He wouldn’t be kissing anyway, wouldn’t take off his mask even for that. 

Kakashi could do it, if he wanted to.

Or he could do it when Iruka would be alone. He could pretend it was Iruka beneath him, above him, around him. He could imagine Iruka watching himself in a mirror, being aroused by the Prism’s sensual swirls. He couldn’t have sex with Iruka, not without revealing everything and likely being soundly rejected for even asking, but he could perhaps get it out of his system by proxy.

No. 

He couldn’t. 

Things had changed, yes.

But Kakashi hadn’t.

It would have been simpler if Iruka was easy to dislike. If he were rude, or arrogant, or resentful, or selfish. He wasn’t any of those things—not at first glance, and not after the months of surveillance he had conducted before the Prism destroyed the one good, easy thing he had apart from porn. 

So Kakashi had to search for reasons.

If Kakashi sometimes looked over _Icha Icha_ while he was in line at the mission desk, it was only to remind himself that the smile he saw wasn’t directed at him, and that he didn’t want it to be.

If Kakashi occasionally sat in a tree that had an excellent view of Iruka’s classroom, it was only to remind himself that Iruka was a strict authoritarian who loathed every inch of Kakashi’s lazy, careless demeanor, and didn’t care to learn what might lay below. 

If Kakashi happened to pass _The Sharpened Kunai_ when Iruka was there and glanced to see who the chūnin was sitting with that night, it was only to remind himself it wasn’t _him_ that Iruka waited for. 

If Kakashi heard Iruka talking about plans for an onsen and once again considered accepting a sexual proposition, thinking of how exposed Iruka would feel with others to see his Prism, it was only in revenge. 

If he came thrusting into his own fist at the mental image of Iruka, naked, wet, staring at a Prism of Kakashi’s making... that was just vindictive lust. 

He didn’t end up taking his revenge, of course. He couldn’t. 

But if he had… it would have just been fairplay. 

Kakashi wasn’t good at lying to himself.

He had never been a spiteful person. When Sakumo died, Kakashi tried to hate him. He told himself that his father was weak, that he didn’t care about Kakashi enough to stay, that if Sakumo had only obeyed the shinobi code, everything would have been fine. 

It hadn’t worked. He had still carried his father’s tanto, and it only took one compliment from Obito, one assurance from someone else that what his father had done was right, for Kakashi to abandon the code he supposedly built his life on.

He tried to hate other people after that. Enemies, most often, because viewing the people he killed as evil made it easier to justify it to his conscience. That hadn’t lasted long, either. It was hard to mindlessly believe in evil when his enemies shed tears for the ones he had already killed, when they gave their daughters flowers and sought comfort in the arms of a stranger.

In the end, Kakashi didn’t _want_ to hate. The world had enough of that as it was.

But he wasn’t quite made for love, either.

His thoughts of Iruka grew like Star of Yelta morning glories. They blossomed before he woke, and every day he believed they waned, dying a tremulous death, but eventually they would grow again. They filled in the cracks between his thoughts, building up an obelisk in Iruka’s name, overtaking the trees and shrubbery that had once called his land their home. Fragile tissue so weak he could punch through it with a single fingernail was supported by resilient spines, ones that bled when he broke them, staining his hands with dye and perfume that lingered until new blooms grew up to take their place.

The morning glories always bloomed. Even when Kakashi salted the earth. Even when he scorched the grounds. Even when he took a battering ram to the obelisk that held them. 

They always bloomed.

At twenty-five, Kakashi didn’t believe in karma exactly—if it existed, then Kakashi would be rotting in the dirt instead of Rin and the rest—but he did start to question the existence of sadistic deities.

Hinaku Todai was a fresh-faced chūnin from a civilian family. Kakashi never had a mission with him, but he knew the kid’s name for a few different reasons. 

First of all, he had the Prism. 

Second, he lacked any typical shinobi paranoia, and so was inordinately proud of his Prism. 

Third, he was helping at the Academy while another assistant was on maternity leave, and he was fluttering around Iruka so often that Kakashi was considering slipping moth balls in Iruka’s satchel.

“If you have a mate, why would you want anyone else?”

“You better not let the children hear that.” Iruka’s stiff voice floated through the open window to Kakashi’s spot, camouflaged on the roof. 

He had been out of ANBU long enough to worry about his stealth skills getting rusty, so it made sense to test himself by sitting invisible over the teacher’s lounge just after school let out. Really, it did. Boar and Turtle had given him strange looks when they passed. (He assumed, given the masks. But after living in ANBU long enough, body language started to mean more than facial expressions.) His lazy wave from a supine position apparently assured them he wasn’t taken over by an enemy nin or planning to kidnap Konoha’s dearest, so they left him in peace to listen in on the teacher’s conversation.

“Of course not.” Todai’s weedy voice denied. “But don’t you want to know?”

An older woman interrupted. “It’s best not to speculate.”

“I’m not saying to have someone write your name or anything. But it can’t hurt to look in Konoha, right? If it’s someone here...”

“Yeah. You go and shout for your soulmate from the rooftops.” Sui snorted. “See how well that goes.”

“It couldn’t be that hard.” Todai continued like he hadn’t heard her. “You wouldn’t need to ask everyone, right? Just single people with the Prism. I bet you we could name all of them between us. Other than Iruka-sensei and I, of course.”

Iruka remained silent. Kakashi’s stomach burbled unhappily, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since his latest hospital stay. Or maybe that was due to Todai’s flirtatious tone.

“And how many of them would you actually want to be with?” Sui asked, with the air of someone humoring a particularly stupid child. That wasn’t far off, from what Kakashi was hearing. Well, maybe not stupid. Just ignorant and foolhardy. “Most of them are from the major clans. That’s a stuck-up Hyuuga at best, Aburame at worst.”

“Inuzuka Junko wouldn’t be too bad.” Yuzuru murmured contemplatively. “Or Mitani.”

“Hyuuga Asumu.” Taidou sounded like he was nodding enthusiastically now that someone appeared to be on his wavelength. 

“Yuhi Chido.”

The name swap occurred for another minute or so, Iruka staying out of it, until one name cut the mood like a chakra blade.

“Hatake Kakashi.”

It was Sui who said it, casually enough, but a short silence followed. 

“Sharingan Kakashi?” Taidou sounded like he was frowning. “He has the Prism?”

“This is why you shouldn’t gossip.” The older woman growled. Wood scraped wood, a swish of papers through air, and then a door shut. 

Ah. Now he remembered her. Viper, an ANBU who retired five years before, after a tourniquet saved her life and lost her arm. He didn’t know she had turned to teaching. Or administration?

A moment later, Taidou spoke, hesitant for possibly the first time in his young life. “Was that a secret, or…?”

“Not exactly.” Yuzuru sighed. “But shinobi are a paranoid bunch. The higher the rank, the worse it gets. I wouldn’t let them catch you gossiping about their mates. It’s a rule you need to learn, kid: don’t look if you can’t handle what you’d get.”

Kakashi wisely interpreted “them” to mean ANBU. 

“I’d like to _handle_ him.” A middle-aged man he didn’t recognize leered, innuendo thick. He suspected it was more to lighten the mood than out of any actual interest. “Besides, if he was actually your soulmate, being caught prying wouldn’t be a problem, would it? I wouldn’t mind having the Prism if it was him.”

“Iruka?” Sui questioned. Kakashi could imagine her dark green eyebrows raised. There must have been a facial expression or physical cue, because Kakashi had heard nothing. 

“Uh,” Iruka cleared his throat. “Sorry, it’s just—I don’t see it.”

“See what?” Todai asked.

“Well… not everyone wants their soulmate. Even if you were perfectly compatible at birth, people can change. Nurture can overcome nature. If there’s anyone that’s taught to suppress their nature, it’s ANBU.” 

It was interesting that iruka didn’t shy from the term, unlike the others, but that interest was dulled in comparison to the other information Kakashi had learned.

Was that why Iruka didn’t wait for his soulmate? He believed in the biology argument, that it was merely chakra resonance or a survival mechanism to seek out good genetic mates? Or perhaps that the gods or fates lost their control once a child was old enough to form a sense of self?

 _Free will_. 

“And I don’t really know Kakashi, but he seems so…” Iruka trailed off for a moment, as if searching for the right word. 

Kakashi wished he would stay lost forever, but he didn’t. Iruka swooped on it and mercilessly plucked it from the waters of Kakashi’s gut, a slimy fish whose scales lacerated Kakashi’s throat on the way down. 

“ _Cold_.”

A pause. 

“...really? I thought he was pretty laid back. I guess—”

A door opened and heavy footsteps were followed by a sigh and two resounding thumps. “Took me ten minutes to find the damn alpha roster. Todai-kun, I told you to put it in the _filing cabinet_ , not my _desk_. Forget it, let’s get this over with so we can all go home. Or so _I_ can go home, I couldn’t care less what you bastards get up to.”

Kakashi didn’t run away, but he also didn’t stick around to hear the rest. 

_Cold_.

Umino Iruka was more observant than people gave him credit for. His assessment regarding the ANBU… well, he wasn’t incorrect, and Kakashi believed in free will, Prism or no.

What bothered Kakashi wasn’t any of that.

It was what Iruka observed about _him_. 

Not that people hadn’t called Kakashi cold before; they had, many different times and many different ways. But Iruka should have no reason to know most of that. He wasn’t active duty during Hannabi Bridge, or even Rin’s sacrifice. Iruka wasn’t ANBU. Had the whispers of Cold-Blooded Kakashi made it to the lower ranks? Or had it been the misunderstanding with that last report? How had Iruka so easily seen beneath the thin veneer of smut and slouching, to the overwrought steel within? Was it merely the fact that he was ex-ANBU, and nothing to do with Kakashi himself at all? Did Iruka have some personal vendetta against ANBU?

Kakashi couldn’t argue against it. 

He was cold. He was _freezing_. 

But it wasn’t in the way everyone meant when they said that word.

It wasn’t that Kakashi didn’t care. It wasn’t that he was actually aloof and impervious to the pain of others. 

No, Kakashi was cold because he couldn’t generate heat. He didn’t have the power to make or receive warmth. He would just leech it out from anything near, taking their kindness for himself, but losing it in a heartbeat, and spitting out nothing in return. He had stolen Rin’s affection, Obito’s trust, Minato’s pride, and kept none of it in the end. He let Guy and Tenzo in when he wanted them, but they never truly needed him in return. Not for more than another weapon on the battlefield. 

Hearing Iruka’s perception of him didn’t really change anything. Kakashi was never under any illusion that Iruka was nursing fuzzy feelings beneath that disapproving scowl. It was only the particular choice in word, the accuracy of it, that shocked him. 

It was worse than hearing that Iruka didn’t want a nameless, faceless, conceptual entity for a lover. 

Iruka didn’t want _Kakashi_.

And for good reason.

However, at the same time… _Iruka didn’t want a nameless, faceless, conceptual entity for a lover_. 

That meant, if Iruka ever changed his mind… if he ever decided that he wanted Kakashi instead of Todai or whoever the hell else, it wouldn’t be because of the Prism. Kakashi would be able to trust that it was _him_ Iruka wanted.

If Kakashi could give Iruka any of the things he would want in a lover. Which he couldn’t.

If Iruka wouldn’t hate Kakashi specifically _because_ they were soulmates. 

If Kakashi wanted a relationship. Which he couldn’t. 

If Kakashi wanted Iruka. Which he shouldn’t.

But he did.

The door of possibility wasn’t opened, not exactly. But one of the locks was removed: a small, seemingly insignificant combination lock, paltry compared to the padlocks and welded-shut doorway and advanced sealing jutsu that remained.

But that one lock aged, crumbled into rust, and left only dirty residue behind on Kakashi’s fingers. 

Possibilities… the only enticement greater than boredom.

Kakashi knew hatred was beyond his reach, but he had hoped to cling to resentment. He had hoped to gather jealousy or envy or whatever flaws Iruka had around himself like a cloak, to protect him from the flower’s stain.

But now, the Stars of Yelta bloomed brighter and more beautiful than ever, tangible petals and stalks and leaves rather than theoretical illusions.

It would have been easier if he had never stopped his avoidance at all.

_“Don’t look if you can’t handle what you get.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Basically, Iruka has sex with someone, and Kakashi sees that in the Prism. He is even more emotionally closed-off and touch-starved in this fic than in canon, given the Prism, and begins to have a very adverse emotional reaction, initially feeling almost violated by it, similar to someone unwillingly in a sexual situation. That reaction doesn't last and Kakashi ends up calming himself, but it does exist. Throughout the whole thing, Iruka has no idea his soulmate would ever be concerned by it, and Kakashi doesn't blame Iruka for it (not really), so there was never ill intent on either side. But the emotional effect is there. 
> 
> If you decide you don't want to read that scene, please read until the line **"Kakashi’s dripping hair formed a damp spot in the center of his comforter."** Then use the "Find in Page" function to skip to **"That was when Kakashi started to hate his soulmate."** That should give you the basis of what's going on without reading any details of the moment.


	4. Green

Kakashi had heard of the Seven Stages of Grief, although he had come up with his own version of it. He realized over the months after Iruka’s rather illuminative staff meeting that Denial deserved several stages all its own. Kakashi had nothing to grieve, but he had a hell of a lot to deny, and he had tried every way he could think of to do it. He was currently in the stage of Resignation; one in which he watched Iruka only from afar, letting time slip by at the same rate as an inescapable feeling began to grow:

He was missing something. 

Losing something. 

If he let time keep passing, eventually, it would cost him something precious. 

It didn’t take a lot to guess what that ‘something’ was, but Kakashi preferred to keep it unnamed. 

Every slash of the Prism across his nude body was a reminder that he couldn’t lose what he didn’t have. 

Each time, it was either bitter cruelty or cold comfort, depending on how morose and self-pitying Kakashi allowed himself to be.

As more time passed, and Iruka had sex once, twice, thrice, four times more—Kakashi found despondency increasingly difficult to escape. 

At twenty-six years old, Kakashi wouldn’t have noticed anything if he hadn’t caught sight of an orange hue over his shoulder as he switched to a less bloody shirt. He craned his neck to get a better view, twisting until he could see flecks of Prism. It speckled him with sparse copper, like flicking wet fingers at a rice paper wall. A quick check of his arms and torso showed that the Prism was confined to his back, primarily between his shoulder blades and down to the small of his spine. 

It wasn’t intentional touches, at least not of full hands. It was more like poking and prodding, or perhaps fingers that were mostly covered by gloves. 

Kakashi didn’t have time to strip and form a clone to double-check. He tried to think that it didn’t matter. He was two days journey from Konoha and, whatever Iruka was going through, it didn’t involve Kakashi. Nothing about Iruka involved Kakashi. 

It was worlds easier to think than to believe. By the time he killed his tail, sealed their remains, and recognized the familiar scents of cedar and pine, he had discarded it entirely.

When he stepped through the gates, it was to the news that one of their own turned traitor. A chūnin teacher at the Academy tricked Minato’s son into stealing the Scrolls of Seals. (Kakashi wished he had trouble believing the boy was that stupid, but he evidently didn’t inherit the intelligence of either of his parents.) Umino Iruka took a fuma shuriken to the back to protect him. He was expected to make it, as far as Genma knew, and Genma could be trusted to know just about everything. 

Kakashi sat in the bath for a long time that night, cataloguing scars he had never seen, noting small flaws and blemishes. Apart from the mole on his chin, which he had noticed plenty of times while shaving, he also had one on his right hip, near the crease of thigh and pelvis; and a final one on his left calf, under the tender skin on the back of his knee. 

He saw scars and marks and moles and divots and muscles and bones, but he didn’t see the Prism. 

Not even long after the water had grown cold enough to leech his body heat, leaving him a mass of goosebumps and shivers.

Even if Iruka didn’t believe in soulmates—maybe he wanted someone, anyone. 

Maybe that someone could be Kakashi.

He wouldn’t reveal he was Iruka’s soulmate. He could use the knowledge he’d gained over years of obsession and—

And do what? 

Comfort was the last thing Kakashi knew how to provide, and Iruka was no doubt surrounded by friends and coworkers who knew him better.

Kakashi wouldn’t be able to help.

_(But maybe_ Kakashi _didn’t have to.)_

_Collected Preliminary Letters Leading to the Treatise of Onikama_ was the driest, medium-size hardback with a dust-jacket that Kakashi could find at any bookstores in Konoha. He bought it, chucked the book minus the cover into the Konoha Library’s return bin, and stopped by the Hatake Estate to pick up _Curiosities in Lace_ , which he happened to own two copies of because one was a rare first-edition he had stumbled upon in the Land of Lightning some years back. It held a place of honor as one of the least tawdry novels Kakashi owned. It _had_ smut, of course, but it was primarily a comedic murder mystery with an abnormally attractive pair of protagonists. 

Iruka might hate it, either for the smut or the inaccurate basics of human anatomy and physics (which Kakashi loved to laugh at), but the teacher probably wouldn’t find it boring. It would be a distraction, at the least.

If he hated it, he would chuck it in the garbage or give it to a friend and never think about it again. There were no grand messages in the comedic mystery, no philosophical arguments or religious stances, no mention of soulmates. Iruka was good enough with traps that he would be able to assure himself quickly that there were no jutsus or hidden seals within the crisp pages. His strangely muted reaction to the squirrel-clone indicated he wasn’t near as paranoid about being observed as he should be. 

Kakashi couldn’t possibly hurt Iruka with this. He had thought about it from every angle. As long as he didn’t include a note or a chakra signature or any stupid hint of himself, it might as well not be from Kakashi at all. And if it wasn’t _Kakashi_ , it was safe.

There was no risk to this, for either of them. No personal stake. No Prism involved. No way to trace it back to Kakashi, who had found _Curiosities in Lace_ too tame to adequately ward off polite conversation and therefore hadn’t read it in public for years. A henge even ensured his purchase at the bookstore would remain anonymous.

It was perfect. 

No risk, except for the method of delivery.

Kakashi slipped the third-edition hardcover into the boring dust-jacket, and set off to do one thing he never expected:

Break _into_ Konoha’s hospital, rather than out.

It turned out to be disappointingly easy. Kakashi kept ANBU camouflage up in Iruka’s room, but it wasn’t necessary. He was sleeping on his stomach, a sheet pooled low around his waist, hospital gown open in the back to reveal crisp white bandages. His hair lie in tangled snarls against his shoulders and the pillowcase, obscuring most of his face, but Kakashi could see his eyes were shut, and his chakra flowed steady.

Kakashi could have stayed. He could have stared for hours at the gentle rise and fall of Iruka’s chest, the dip of his tailbone, the slope of his neck.

But it wasn’t his right to see. 

Plus, camouflage was a bitch to keep up on low chakra levels. 

He placed the book on Iruka’s nightstand, and slipped out the window.

It was even easier than that to discreetly watch Iruka shuffle home. Naruto circled him like an excitable puppy. He hovered as if to stop his teacher from falling, forgot his purpose after a few minutes and surged ahead, then doubled back after remembering. 

Iruka gave a tenterhook smile on demand. 

It dropped as soon as Naruto turned away, weak springs collapsing at the slightest of force. His skin was sallow and too dark beneath his eyes. He moved stiffly, like he was wrapped in layers of bubble-wrap and enemy-nin were nearby, like every step was an excruciating exercise in both effort and restraint 

Kakashi could asses the damage clearly now that he could observe the effects: several stitches in Iruka’s back, an unhealed wound in his right thigh, and various aches and pains no doubt from extensive bruising, blood, and chakra loss that the medic-nins decided were less life-threatening than the fuma shuriken. 

Reasonable, but frustrating. Kakashi hated the hospital, but he was also accustomed to fieldwork and caring for his own injuries. Iruka wasn’t. 

They could have kept him for a few more days. 

Against all of his desires and better judgement, Kakashi passed a genin team.

There was grief and childhood trauma trapped in every inch of Team Seven, and Kakashi seriously considered, for not the first time, breaking into Iruka’s apartment to steal a book. Only this time, instead of looking for porn, he was hoping for a text on psycho-social issues in adolescent orphans.

Unfortunately, if empathetic Iruka hadn’t been able to help the kids with armchair psychology after three years with them, there was no way Kakashi was going to. They would figure it out for themselves, sooner or later. Kakashi’s job was to keep them alive until they did.

It took Naruto ten seconds of speaking to mention Iruka for the first time. It took Kakashi two seconds of thinking to come up with a myriad of different ways to subtly pry information from his new students. It took him three seconds of debating to decide he had too much pride for that.

It only took one more to realize that no, he really didn’t.

In only a few days, Kakashi recognized the futility of his effort. The Umino Iruka that Team Seven knew was the same person Kakashi had seen stomping through the Academy yard a hundred times over, the same one that shouted himself hoarse at incompetence but patiently explained for the ignorant. 

What Kakashi wanted to know weren’t things that Iruka would reveal to children who looked up to him as a mentor and leader.

They weren’t things Iruka would ever reveal to the Copy-nin, either.

Kakashi didn’t know if Iruka read _Curiosities in Lace_. He liked to imagine that the small smiles, baffled looks, and outright incredulity he saw sometimes out the Jōnin Standby Room window were caused by it. Liked to think that he could guess which scene Iruka was reading based on his reactions. In reality, Iruka could have been reading anything of a similar size. But he did use the new dust-jacket, and that was… something. 

Everytime Kakashi saw it, he became aware of a new shape stuck between his ribs, pressing into his heart on every beat. 

He thought it might be a circle, because it didn’t have any edges at all.

The first time that Kakashi was forced to interact with Iruka directly, at least since the poorly-received mission report, was at the end of a particularly tiresome D-rank. Tiresome for the genin, at least. Kakashi had been pretty content sitting on a fence and reading _Icha Icha Paradise_ (he needed the most familiar and comforting of his precious companions to deal with those three) while the children endeavored to repair the snowed-in roof of a garden shed with absolutely no understanding of basic physics. Their “repairs” had taken six hours and fallen down on them twice. 

Naruto was still following Kakashi, complaining loudly about the bump on his head (which was definitely not Kakashi’s fault, as he kept saying; how could Naruto expect to fight enemy shinobi when he couldn’t dodge a 2-by-4 wielded only by gravity?), when they reached the mission desk. Kakashi had two late reports from their last missions to turn in as well as this one, so he figured he would kill three birds with one shuriken. 

Except Iruka must have either switched shifts, or was working unusually late. As soon as they entered the room, Naruto bounded off towards his former teacher. 

“Iruka-sensei!” He called, jumping to the front as Iruka finished taking a chūnin’s report. 

Iruka looked up, an easy smile gracing his lips at a sight that would have made a lesser man cringe. That much unbridled enthusiasm exhausted Kakashi just by sheer proximity, but Iruka soaked it in with grace to spare. 

The circles beneath his eyes were gone, and the few pounds of muscle he had lost in the hospital had been replenished, filling his vest out nicely.

He looked good. Healthy. Happy. 

“Naruto.” Iruka greeted. His gaze slid to Kakashi and his smile fell a bit, the warmth transforming into formality. 

It felt like an insult to Minato’s memory to be envious of his son, who had experienced so little joy and love in his life, and none of it from Kakashi. But he was. He envied the ease with which Naruto could affect others, whether he realized it or not. 

The kid spread happiness, and that was a gift greater than any clan jutsu or kekkei genkai. 

Kakashi approached at a more sedate pace. Naruto shot off about their most recent mission, peppering the illustrious (and primarily fictional) tale with slurs about Kakashi and Sasuke’s characters. While his own attention was fixed on Iruka, he caught the words “pervert,” and “lazy,” before Iruka interrupted with a stern glare. 

“Don’t insult your jōnin-sensei, Naruto.” He scolded. “You’re being disrespectful. Don’t forget he’s an elite shinobi, and your superior.”

“Well, yeah, he’s really strong, you know! But that means he coulda helped and we woulda been done in, like a minute, but instead he just read that stupid book! Wha—”

“Naruto!” The name was spoken so sharply that a few heads turned in their direction. Naruto balked. “You’re not going to get stronger if you rely on someone else to do everything for you. And, you need to trust your leader. I’ve taught you better than that.” 

“Sorry, Iruka-sensei.” Naruto muttered, dipping his head in what could almost be a half-bow. It was more of an apology than Kakashi would have gotten. “Sorry, Kakashi-sensei.” 

“Maa, maa, let’s forget it.” Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly and held out the scrolls in his other hand. “I’ve heard a lot lately about how my teaching method doesn’t stack up to the famous Iruka-sensei. I’m going to lose confidence in myself at this rate.” 

“I’m sure that could never happen. And don’t you mean infamous?” Iruka asked while he took the mission scrolls, a small, humorous quirk to his mouth. Kakashi retracted his hand immediately, sliding it into his pocket.

“Actually, I think you’re the only person these brats _don’t_ badmouth.” Kakashi turned his eye up in a smile. “Even Sasuke hasn’t said a word against you.” 

“Oh. Is that so?” Warmth bloomed on Iruka’s cheeks, eyes dropping to the reports. Maybe it was the fluster of hearing praise from his students that made Iruka look over the sloppy kana, snow-damp spots, and lateness to stamp one of the reports as accepted. “Well, they’re good kids. Over all.” He added with a pointed glance at Naruto, who pouted.

Thirty seconds in, and Kakashi had already made Iruka smile (close enough) and blush. Granted, only for a moment, and only because of Naruto, but that seemed less important than usual for some reason. Probably the proximity.

His heart beat a strong staccato.

They were as close now as they had ever been, and still there was two feet between, filled by a wooden desk and a hyperactive child and a mile of unbreachable walls. 

But maybe it didn’t have to be a complete vacuum. Maybe there was room for a tiny bit of warmth, just as much as Iruka had with any other annoying jōnin. 

There was a tiny scar on Iruka’s left hand, in the flesh between his thumb and forefinger. Kakashi wanted to trace it, with fingers or lips or tongue.

Now that was _too_ much warmth. Backtrack, backtrack.

Iruka wouldn’t want that. 

“Kakashi-sensei!” Naruto whined. “Tell Iruka-sensei how cool I am now! That new technique I learned, you know, you know!” 

“Technique… Hmm...” Kakashi looked up at the ceiling. “...was there something like that?”

“Come on!” Naruto’s voice rose to frankly painful decibels. “When I used my shadow clones to stand on each other’s—or my? Whatever—heads and rescued that injured kitten, totally saving the day?”

That… wasn’t exactly how it happened, and wasn’t even a technique in the first place. Iruka raised an eyebrow at Kakashi, a silent request for confirmation, and Kakashi shrugged a shoulder. Iruka must have decided that was good enough, because he leaned over and ruffled Naruto’s hair. “Hey, why don’t we go for ramen? My shift ends in, uh—about fifteen minutes.”

“Alright!” Naruto cheered, pumping a fist in the air. “ _Ich-i-ra-ku~!_ ”

“Would you care to join us?” Iruka asked Kakashi, with a different smile than before. Softer. 

So soft it clogged Kakashi’s throat painfully, causing him to clear it. “Oh… thanks for the offer, but I—”

“I see this jerk every day.” Naruto groaned, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder to rudely indicate Kakashi. “I don’t wanna eat with him, too!”

“What’s that, Naruto? Now that you’re getting paid for missions, you want to show your two amazing sensei your gratitude by treating us to ramen?” Iruka’s eyes glittered mischievously as they met Kakashi’s. It was enough to make his breath hitch and blot out Naruto’s indignant squawks. “That sounds like a great idea. What do you say, Kakashi-sensei?”

It sounded like hell.

Iruka would pay for Naruto’s portion anyway, because that was the sort of kind, paternal person he was. Naruto knew that, too, otherwise his complaints would have been another half-octave higher. 

It was sort of gratifying to be proven correct after a few more seconds of squawking.

“Fine, then I’ll pay, and you just have to suffer our company as retribution.” Iruka said.

Naruto grumbled but nodded. Iruka had won the battle, but he looked to Kakashi expectantly to see if he had won the war. “Kakashi-sensei?”

Kakashi should decline, get away before there was an unfortunate incident with more than black and white, and before he roped himself into sitting through an entire dinner of awkward small-talk that didn’t even approach the things Kakashi wanted to know. 

But his name on Iruka’s tongue bounced around in his head like a cannonball, and what Kakashi found falling out of his mouth was a weak, “Maa, if my cute little student insists...”

It was just to hear Naruto’s dramatic wailing grate on someone else’s ears as much as his own. Really. No other reason. 

…and maybe to hear Iruka say his name again. Kakashi was better at visual imagination than auditory, and with tonight he would have detailed, realistic material to torture himself with when the Prism reappeared in all of its intimate glory. After all, the better his fantasy, the more poignant the torture, right?

Kakashi was never good at lying to himself. The flowers were springing up higher and sturdier than ever, and all he was doing was sprinkling fertilizer on their quite healthy roots.

But what was he supposed to do when the fertilizer was practically shoved into his hands?

Guy-esque recriminations about self-discipline and sacrifice played in Kakashi’s head for the entire trek to _Ichiraku’s_.

Iruka took the seat in the corner. Naruto immediately slid in next to him, leaving the seat on the kid’s left for Kakashi. That provided a small measure of relief. Although Naruto was more likely to knock into him with knobbly knees or elbows than Iruka was, the consequences would have far less disastrous potential in the genin’s case.

It didn’t hurt that Kakashi’s stool happened to be closest to the space heater.

It quickly became apparent that Naruto and Iruka were capable of carrying the conversation by themselves. Kakashi added occasionally by dryly correcting the very worst of Naruto’s exaggerations. The lesser ones, he let slide. From the exasperation mixed in with Iruka’s fond smile, he knew how unlikely Naruto’s grandiose stories were, and had long since learned to put up with them. 

A game ended up forming between Kakashi and Naruto, wherein the latter tried to catch Kakashi with his mask down and the former had no trouble eating despite. Iruka never tried to see, and smacked Naruto on the back of the head more than once for the attempts. Kakashi’s hands mysteriously vanished beneath the counter at each of those points, more to judge if Iruka was watching for the Prism than actually trying to hide it. (It wouldn’t be hard to explain away the Prism in so mundane a place as his fingers, if Kakashi were pressed to.) 

Iruka didn’t seem to notice. 

There was a secondary game of Kakashi slipping his extra bamboo shoots into Naruto’s bowl when he wasn’t looking. Iruka laughed at Naruto’s initial indignant howl, but flushed and redirected when the kid pointed out that Iruka didn’t eat many more vegetables than he did. 

Kakashi watched with morbid fascination as a pretty red suffused his cheeks. 

Maybe that was why Iruka didn’t care about the Prism. He didn’t need it to add color to his life. He was enough color to light up everything around, all by himself.

The entire dinner was uncomfortable, abrasive between Naruto’s theatrics and Kakashi’s over-awareness of the man on the other side. 

But… it wasn’t bad. Not entirely. 

Kakashi saw more of Iruka’s eyes in a single half-hour than in the last two years. 

And better, he didn’t see them in more distress than mild annoyance.

That was probably due to Kakashi’s predominant silence and Iruka’s occupation in Naruto’s antics, but it was nice to know that they could exist in relatively close quarters without Kakashi causing a cataclysm.

As soon as they were finished, Naruto ran off, leaving Kakashi in the dust. Using Body-Flickers to escape social situations was considered bad form, wasn’t it? Especially before the tab was settled. But maybe that would be fortuitous. It would keep Iruka from inviting him again. 

Kakashi tried to remind himself that that was a good thing.

Perhaps the teacher was anticipating that, because as soon as Kakashi slipped off the stool, he was stepping too close to reasonably be ignored and passing enough money to Teuchi for all three of them.

“Thanks for the meal, sensei. I can pay you back—”

“No, don’t mention it.” Iruka said, scratching his scar abashedly. “Consider it my apology for using you to discipline Naruto. I shouldn’t have pressured you into this.”

It wasn’t as though Kakashi didn’t recognize he was being used for that purpose, but for some reason, hearing the words crumbled ashes in Kakashi’s mouth. He focused on speaking clearly without letting them fall out. “Just Kakashi. And it was no trouble.” He said, hands deep in his pockets and eye curving into an affable arch. “Feel free to use me whenever you like.”

Iruka’s eyes grew wide and his cheeks darkened.

That came out wrong, Kakashi belatedly realized. 

When in doubt, distract the enemy and execute a tactical retreat. 

“I promised my ninken special treats tonight, so I have to get going.” Kakashi said lamely. But it wasn’t like his normal excuses were much better. Iruka probably wouldn’t notice. “Have a good night.” 

He turned, ducking under the curtain and into the frigid winter air. 

He made it a few steps before a slight disturbance in air flow alerted Kakashi to movement behind him. 

Glancing over his shoulder, Kakashi froze when doe-brown eyes were much closer than he expected. Iruka had followed. His right hand hovered in the space between them, as if he was going to reach out but thought better of it at the last moment. 

They were only a few inches apart.

Kakashi could close that distance in a single racing heartbeat. Iruka’s palm could be on his arm, or his chest—over clothes, but there, tangible and _real_ , and—

Iruka lowered his hand. Kakashi watched opportunity retreat along with it.

“I, uh, I wanted to apologize.” 

Iruka continued, sounding a touch embarrassed. 

“I was hard on you, with the mission reports. More than I should have been. I mean, your reports were crappy, but I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions and insulted your leadership. It didn’t really even have anything to do with you, personally, I was—” He bit off his ramblings, pausing. He let out a harsh breath. “I just wanted to apologize. Which would have been easier to do if you had turned in a single report to me in the last year.” 

Kakashi hadn’t thought his avoidance went completely unnoticed, but he didn’t expect the hint of irritation in Iruka’s tone. 

There was no point denying it. 

“I didn’t realize you missed me, sensei.” Iruka opened his mouth to respond, no doubt heatedly, so Kakashi continued before the denial could come. “Maa, I’m at fault, as well. I was intentionally provoking you.” 

“Yeah, I got that. And so we’re clear, I’m not giving you permission to do that again.”

“But wasn’t it interesting?” 

Iruka gave him an odd look.

It was a look that turned Kakashi’s skin transparent, saw his real intentions, and found them both faintly amusing and thoroughly unimpressive. 

“There’s interesting, Kakashi-sensei, and then there’s making my job harder. I’d love to see you just try the first.”

Kakashi couldn’t say a word.

Iruka smiled, bid him goodnight, and disappeared down the street.

That… was an invitation.

It was, wasn’t it? 

He couldn’t see it any other way.

_‘Feel free to use me whenever you like,’_ Kakashi had said. 

He thought he hadn’t changed at all. He thought someone touching him would be painful, intrusive, that he wouldn’t want what Iruka had even if it was on the table.

But even though he was caught by surprise, even though it was undoubtedly meant to be something as simple as tapping Kakashi’s arm to get his attention…

He had wanted Iruka to touch him. 

In reality, not a fantasy.

And it seemed Iruka wasn’t entirely averse to the idea himself.


	5. Blue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't think there are any warnings this time, other than references to canonical character death, but that's pretty par for the course here.
> 
> Thank everyone so much for your kudos, comments, and subscriptions. It's truly heartening to see those little numbers go up, and I can't explain how much your words have inspired me.

_“I don’t think it’s much of an assumption to say that no one wants to find their soulmate, only to be rejected.”_

At the time Kakashi said that, he hadn’t expected it to ever happen. It was a theoretical, merely said because he knew it would prey on Hiruzen’s paternal instincts for Iruka. Later, he learned the extent of the teacher’s disregard for both him and the concept of soulmates and figured, if either of them were ever to be rejected, it would be Kakashi. That if Iruka ever realized either Kakashi’s interest, the origin of his Prism, or both, he would state in no uncertain terms all the reasons why Kakashi was out of the running entirely.

But a single dinner and a couple minutes of stilted conversation had tipped Kakashi’s scales and set them to swinging, with spare bits and bobbles fusing together or tumbling over the sides to be fully lost.

There was no point denying that he had enjoyed provoking Iruka, before the Prism. He wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t like seeing Iruka’s reactions. But there was a risk to doing it now. Iruka had nearly touched him after a simple dinner with Naruto. Kakashi would have to be on guard at all times, ready to retreat at the slightest sign of intent. 

That wasn’t too different from Kakashi’s normal, actually. While he could never attain the same speed as the Yellow Flash, he was fast enough to dodge casual contact from a chūnin. He could probably even do it without Iruka noticing, and if he did—Kakashi’s solitary nature was well-known. Iruka was unlikely to take it personally. 

If someone else touched Iruka in one of the few spots Kakashi’s skin wasn’t fully covered, he could Body Flicker away and make a shitty excuse later. The only danger Kakashi had little chance of avoiding was a sudden tackle by Might Guy, but Guy hadn’t touched Kakashi’s bare skin outside of necessity for years. Even in a tackle, he would err towards the covered spots. 

Guy was surprisingly observant in certain issues. Kakashi would never admit it, but he was a good friend.

And Kakashi, for any of his other faults, was a good shinobi. He could keep a solid physical distance while seeing everything Iruka would let him.

As long as Kakashi didn’t get too close… 

He could do this. He could have this much.

Due to Team Seven, Kakashi had mission reports to turn in nearly every day. (Although he often waited until several stacked up to bother.) Taking nothing higher than D-ranks meant a measly two sheets of paper, and significant freedom in the details disclosed. Unlike his typical A-ranks, which would see scrutiny from the Hokage, jōnin commander, and other officials—reports which would be used to influence future missions or decide on courses of action that could influence a war—the D-ranks would likely never be seen past confirmation for pay. 

D-ranks were mind-numbing wastes of shinobi time, but, in this case, they provided an opportunity. 

There was no line when Kakashi entered the mission room, which was exactly as he had intended. Soft scratching from Iruka’s pencil over a stack of papers and the low discussion of a few chūnin on the couches were the only sounds, but Kakashi’s footsteps were too low to be heard even so. It wasn’t until his shadow fell across Iruka’s paper that he looked up. Kakashi’s presence invoked a flicker of surprise, and then a quirk of lips that balanced precariously between wary and pleased. 

“Kakashi-sensei.” Iruka greeted mildly as Kakashi deposited the scroll in his hand. “Turning something in on time?”

“I had too much spare time today, so I thought I’d come to relieve you of your boredom.”

Iruka froze in the act of smoothing open the scroll. “How so?”

“Maa, I think this report will interest you.” Kakashi smiled genially as Iruka’s eyes darted up to him, then turned to focus on the content of the scroll itself.

The expressive nature of his soulmate’s face made it easy to tell when he started to recognize the irregularities in the report. Kakashi waited and watched while Iruka traced lines and jumped around the page. 

At first, the only oddity would seem to be the length of the descriptions. In the first section beyond basic status and members, Kakashi had gone on at length regarding their surroundings, notably including the numbers of various random items—two chipmunks, one wheelbarrow, three people wearing scarfs, one stray dog, two drainage ditches, and four sparrows. 

It was the next section that contained the even finer specifics, and stood a few paragraphs longer than it rightfully ought to, although all of the information was technically accurate. 

There, the code from above was meant to be implemented. 

His eye traced Iruka’s mouth as it formed over silent words, plucking them out until there was enough to complete the whole.

_‘Prey outwits hunters  
Soap in scratches, shadow clones  
Break a porcelain throne  
And in defeat are  
Popped by mighty claws’_

Iruka huffed a soft laugh, eyes bright. “How many did he make?”

“At least thirty, and most of those at once.”

“Is that how Sakura got the black eye?” Iruka’s tone was warm with humor, making Kakashi glad he had put in that she had already gotten it healed by the writing of the report. He probably wouldn’t have gotten a positive reaction if Iruka was concerned for his student. “I can’t imagine she was too happy about that.”

“Naruto suffered much worse.” Kakashi agreed with a nod. “Sasuke caught the cat while Sakura found the real Naruto and punched him into the toilet. Her form was very good.”

Iruka shook his head, but chuckled. “At least he’s learned not to create shadow clones in a limited space.” He paused dubiously. “I hope.” Picking up the stamp, Iruka labelled the report ‘approved’, then looked up to Kakashi with a warm smile. “Thank you for your hard work, Kakashi-sensei. And your report.”

Kakashi’s fingers tingled and it occurred to him that, if he reached out, Iruka probably wouldn’t back away. 

His features were open. Welcoming.

Kakashi had never before wanted to touch someone so badly, and he wasn’t sure it was sexual at all. This need was a dull ache in his chest rather than a fire in his belly, but it was just as strong.

He wondered if Iruka had ever felt that sort of ache for someone.

In the end, whatever Kakashi wanted didn’t matter. This had been easier than he had hoped it could be. If this was all he could get without destroying it, he would take it with the gratitude of the destitute.

“See you later, sensei.”

There were four more reports over that winter, with small conversation accompanying, all centering on Team Seven. The mission room soon provoked in Kakashi a Pavlovian response, with dry mouth and sweaty palms, but also a novel sense of comfort. Though Kakashi’s hunger couldn’t be satiated, he was _appeased_. He was content. 

He was lulled into a false sense of security.

There was one more dinner with Naruto between them, when the last of the season’s snow was a thing resigned to memory. They left the stall, Naruto darting out of sight with a shouted parting. Iruka did the same with better diction and lower decibels.

As he started down the street, Kakashi noticed something pale in the dark strands of Iruka’s ponytail. 

A tiny scrap of paper, lined like the stuff Kakashi remembered from his short days at the Academy. 

“Sensei,” He called out. 

Iruka, only a few paces away, stopped and started to spin.

It was so easy to take those few steps, to move faster than Iruka could react, until he was close enough to touch. 

“Don’t move,” Kakashi murmured. 

Iruka’s shoulders tensed, spine straightening, but he obeyed without question. He remained facing away from Kakashi, towards the sparsely populated street, and didn’t so much as turn his head. 

It seemed almost easy, still, to raise his hand and, with trembling fingers, pluck the paper from Iruka’s hair. 

The contact lasted for less than half a second. Their skin never touched, meaning the Prism couldn’t be activated. 

But Kakashi could feel so much in that small, infinite span of time. 

Iruka’s hair was thick and smooth and as cool as the pre-spring air. A few strands tangled around the black ponytail holder. They would snag if Iruka wasn’t careful when he pulled it out. Through his mask, Kakashi could barely catch a hint of a scent, something subtle and herbal. It reminded Kakashi of the light aftermath of incense burnt on open land, and if he leaned forward, he might be able to isolate the individual notes. If he leaned forward, he might feel Iruka’s solid body against his. If he leaned forward, Iruka might let him.

Stepping back, Kakashi held up the tiny strip between his middle and forefingers. 

“Paper,” he explained shortly, afraid a single syllable more would betray the mad dash of oxygen trying to circle through lungs and heart impaired.

Iruka twisted promptly on his heel, but it took a long moment for his wide-eyed stare to drop from Kakashi’s face to his raised hand. 

“Oh,” he swallowed and nodded. “Right. Thanks.” 

There was red on Iruka’s cheeks and his pupils contained depths of space, drawing Kakashi closer with each waxing moment.

He stepped away once more.

“Have a good night, Iruka-sensei.”

By the time he let go of the Body Flicker, he was halfway to his apartment, the paper a heavy weight in his pocket.

The Land of Waves was an ice bath to Kakashi’s senses. It reminded him with brutal clarity how quickly things could go wrong. How easily time could slip by while enemies drew nearer. How easily a burgeoning young life could be snuffed out from little more than inaction.

If he had trained them better. If he had trained himself better. If he had _been_ better. 

Team Seven was quiet in the days following Haku and Zabuza’s final battle. They didn’t understand Zabuza’s choice, either in his seemingly uncaring attitude towards Haku during life, or his brash and head-first rush into death. They might pretend otherwise, but they couldn’t possibly comprehend.

Kakashi did. 

He saw Zabuza’s fingers brush Haku’s neck in the single second after Kakashi pierced the boy’s heart. He saw brilliant gold leaf swell on pale and tanned skin alike, and then flake away as if it had never been. 

He saw Zabuza caress Haku’s face, saw those once blood-thirsty eyes fix on the point where their skin connected. Where no color appeared. 

Kakashi understood.

When they got back from the Land of Waves, Iruka accepted his report with a smile. There was no hidden message that time, no amusing anecdotes or playful codes. Iruka grew more sober with each word that he read, and by the time he was finished, the pleasant flutter of Kakashi’s heart had slowed to a funeral dirge.

It was with the next report that Iruka hesitated before stamping it as accepted. 

Kakashi hadn’t used a code this time, either.

“So, how’s our little hellion?” Iruka asked, with an asymmetric smile. Wariness had crept into one of it’s corners. “Is he getting along well with the rest of Team Seven?”

Kakashi didn’t lie, exactly, but he might have stretched the truth. He fingered the scrap of paper in his pocket and shoved his voice into a box of monotone. “He’s… getting there.”

“Your team’s seen a lot of action lately. Naruto hasn’t had the time to get together with me once.” Iruka scratched his scar in embarrassment, still not reaching for the stamp. “I can’t help worrying about him.”

Of course he did. 

It wasn’t just Kakashi who was being hurt by the new distance between them. Kakashi was one of Iruka’s links to his former students, too.

With a new trickle of guilt, Kakashi reached deep within himself for whatever tiny reserve of positive reassurances he held.

“You know how it is, Iruka-sensei. Uchiha Sasuke is in Team Seven, too. He and Naruto are like a couple of dogs, always circling each other, snapping and snarling.” And Kakashi knew a thing or two about dogs. “But it keeps Naruto on his toes. He’s developing fast.” 

That much was true, although it wasn’t fast _enough_. As a _team_ , they weren’t enough. Kakashi could see the worry lingering in Iruka’s expression, the tension in his neck, the way his gaze dropped to somewhere around Kakashi’s vest. 

That open, honest affection, Iruka’s ability to care so deeply it hurt… it was going to turn against him one of these days. 

But it didn’t have to be today.

“He’s always hoping to catch up to his hero… _you_.” 

Iruka’s eyes widened, then crinkled at the edges. An abashed smile lit his features in a breathtaking moment. 

But that smile didn’t last long.

The chūnin exams were supposed to be a way to force on Team Seven the tools they needed to survive. The exam was supposed to teach them how to operate as a team, how to rely on each other, to fight as one against the rest of the world. He knew, the moment he heard Iruka’s voice, that the teacher wouldn’t agree. Iruka could strike fear into the hearts of genin and jōnin alike, but he was a nurturer. Not a leader. He saw the children as exactly that: children. 

But they weren’t. Not anymore. 

They were soldiers. 

The rage and fear in Iruka’s eyes was bright as the sun, and just as hard to stare into. Kakashi’s nails dug into the meat of his palms, but inside of his pockets, where no one could see. He forced weight into his shoulders to maintain a casual slouch, his eye half-lidded in bored indifference. 

Kurenai wasn’t fooled. She darted him concerned glances at least three times throughout the meeting, and he could feel Iruka’s glare more than that. Kakashi never looked, and he used a Body Flicker to disappear as soon as the meeting was over. 

The frost in Kakashi’s exterior seeped into his innards, freezing over fragile tissues and forming ice crystals in his veins. 

Eventually, Iruka would forgive him. Team Seven would come out of the chūnin exam as technical failures, but alive, and with growth to show. Iruka was too kind, too unused to the harsh realities of war, but he wasn’t weak or stupid. Someday, months in the future, he would see that Kakashi had been right.

Perhaps not in the way he had said it, but that was just another proof that Kakashi was correct to walk away. He didn’t have words to fix this. No words would suffice. Only proof.

Until the exams ended, and Iruka had time to see the results, he would hate Kakashi. Until then, Kakashi had confirmed every negative thought Iruka had ever held towards him.

Until then, Kakashi was _cold_.

In the end, nothing went as Kakashi expected.

By the time all nine genin survived the test, Orochimaru attacked and the Sandaime was murdered. Kakashi had never been so grateful for his mask than at the funeral, when Hiruzen’s grandson fisted tiny hands into Iruka’s funeral blacks and laid his head on the teacher’s shoulder, hitai-ate-less forehead pressing to Iruka’s neck and cheek. It was the sort of intimate, comforting contact that Iruka had never shied from giving. 

Did Iruka have someone to give it in return?

Kakashi hoped so. It couldn’t be _him_ , but Iruka deserved someone. 

Someone who could keep him warm.

Itachi returned. Three days of genjutsu hell turned into an entire month of comatose agony. The sharingan overlaid images into his unconscious mind, and every horrible moment in Kakashi’s life was replayed in absolute, vivid detail, along with some that had never been. 

Except for the Prism. Just as in Itachi’s genjutsu, there were no colors. 

Tsunade woke him, and Kakashi tried to separate threads of reality from the tapestry his mind had weaved.

Colors...

He wondered if that was intentional on Itachi’s part. Kakashi had worked with Itachi in ANBU long enough to know that he had once had a soulmate of his own: Uchiha Shisui. 

Shisui killed himself days before the massacre. Perhaps that was even what caused it, what drove Itachi to the breaking point he must have been at for far longer than any of them had realized.

Yeah. 

Of course it was intentional.

Itachi knew. 

No matter how painful the Prism could be, the one thing worse, was no colors at all. 

Kakashi was twenty-seven when he lost his first genin team. Not to death, but to his own incompetence, and each of the three Legendary Sannin. He was twenty-seven when he lost his second Uchiha to betrayal, and he was twenty-seven when he failed to get to another Uzumaki in time.

Kakashi didn’t seek Iruka out after that. Not consciously. 

He didn’t want to fail an Umino, too.

Kakashi didn’t like alcohol. He didn’t like the way it burned his throat, and he didn’t like the way it settled like liquid fire in his stomach. He didn’t like losing control. Oh, he would drink the strongest liquor straight, with a smile if need be, but it wasn’t strictly pleasurable. Sweet cocktails were even worse. Some varieties of sake were fine, the weak and dry stuff that Kakashi could sip on slowly enough that he would barely feel the effects. 

He also knew a chakra control technique that kept him from feeling _any_ effects, but using it just meant he wasted his money on rotten rice water, so Kakashi saved that for missions with forced consumption. 

Might Guy, having never been in ANBU, had no knowledge of that technique. 

It showed.

It was a testament to how Kakashi had been running himself ragged on solo S-ranks that Guy barely had to wheedle to get him into a drinking competition. Alcohol, in small doses, was an excellent soporific; a blessing, since Kakashi had just hit the stride where his body was convinced it could live on a measly two hours a night and any more was sheer gluttony. He could do with a single night of decent rest. Accepting it as a competition ensured that Guy could be tricked into paying for him, and had the added benefit of Kakashi being left alone for the next few days at least.

“Kaka _shi_!” Guy drew the last syllable of his name out obscenely long, almost tipping over as he slung an arm around the Copy-nin’s shoulders. Guy could normally hold his liquor well, but there were more than a few cups of sake in his system. Kakashi was only feeling the effects of three drinks. He certainly wasn’t about to tell Guy about his foolproof chakra technique, which he had no qualms using as he wasn’t the one splitting his wallet open. Part of a shinobi’s skillset was subterfuge, after all. 

“My Friend, my Rival!” Guy slurred. “Let me tell you of the Pride I feel in my Glorious Students, for Blossoming during the Springtime of their Youth, all three Pro-Progressing to the Final Round of their Second Chūnin Exam!”

Kakashi had to grip the counter to keep from sagging under the weight of Guy’s body leaning heavily on him. In truth, it was difficult to focus on anything the man was saying, because _Iruka was there_. 

He was seated at a table in the center of the room with multiple other chūnin, plus Anko. He looked… weary. He smiled brightly when spoken to, but at other times his gaze unfocused and his lips condensed to a razor’s edge. The beer in his hand soaked his fingers with perspiration and had sat at half-full for the last twenty minutes. 

Four months since Naruto left.

Guy was getting close to vomiting. Kakashi could tell by the sweat beading at his temples, sticking to glossy strands of black, and the way his mouth shut rather than flapping open with more praise for his genin.

Kakashi drained another cup of sake and replaced his mask quicker than anyone could catch. 

He was busy enough keeping an eye on both Iruka and Guy (not an easy task, considering he only had one eye to begin with and Iruka was on his blind side) that he didn’t notice Anko sidling up behind him until she was a mere yard away and throwing her arms around his neck. 

Everyone knew Kakashi’s aversions. Even by looking at him, it wasn’t hard to guess. Guy was the only person who could bypass that, apart from the minimum necessary during missions or sparring. But Anko had little to no filter for either her mouth or her body, and apparently she was intoxicated enough to push his limits. He let it stand for a moment, spine straightening but not throwing her off, until he felt the warm and soft skin of her arm brush against his ear. 

Meaning she wasn’t wearing her jacket. 

Meaning her bare skin was touching his. 

Kakashi’s fingers wrapped around her wrists. By the time anyone else in the bar was aware of what was happening, Kakashi was standing several feet away and Anko was squeaking in alarm as her palms slammed into the bar counter, her weight propelling her into it with her human support snatched away. 

Anko’s squeal and subsequent semi-fall was enough to grab the attention of every shinobi in the bar, halting conversations and turning heads. 

Within two seconds, normal bustle resumed, people either deciding a fight wasn’t breaking out or pretending not to care while listening in. It didn’t matter which. 

Kakashi’s pulse pounded in his ears, his stomach roiled, and it took a momentous effort not to bring his hands up to cover his earlobes. He felt as though tiny ants were crawling on them, as if he could brush them and Anko’s influence away if he tried. 

He didn’t. 

He couldn’t show his weakness. 

Kakashi glanced, as quickly and discreetly as he could, into the mirror behind the bartender. Iruka’s eyes were flickering between Anko and Kakashi, frowning. 

Iruka glanced to his own fingertips just before the magenta streaks began to fade.

Anko recovered quickly, laughing with the glee of the tipsy rather than taking offense. Guy swayed into her and opened his mouth to issue a greeting, but his bushy brows rose comically past his hairline and his face paled. He bolted for the restroom. Kakashi gratefully followed to confirm his win.

When they left, Guy with a fully jumpsuit-covered arm over Kakashi’s shoulder for support, he glanced into the mirror once more. 

Iruka watched them leave, a small crease between his brows. 

The breeze dried cold sweat on Kakashi’s skin. 

The bar door didn’t swing open again.

He steeped in equal parts relief and disappointment.


	6. Indigo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for your kind words and support. <3

The ground was soft from a recent rain, and the astringent scent of pine needles rode on the wind. Early spring had given birth to flowers all around the city, but out in the training fields, there were none. Just the forest, it’s eternally decaying leaves, and the chirping of a thousand birds. Chidori shone in Kakashi’s bare hand, lightning chakra threatening to burn his palm as he sustained it. 

His first semi-accidental use of the mangekyō had landed him in the hospital for three days. It was well worth the price for figuring out how to use it, but going out of commission from a single technique rendered it practically useless. He needed to either reduce the strain, or build his reserves. 

Chakra was part of the body and could be trained like muscle, built up over years of expenditure and breaking of tissues, although natural limits of course existed. Until his broken arm healed entirely to Tsunade’s satisfaction, he was grounded, so it was a perfect time to drain himself through repetitive use of the most chakra-heavy technique that didn’t leave him bed-ridden. 

And, maybe if he pushed far enough, he would pass out for a few hours. 

He could hear Rin’s voice telling him that being unconscious wasn’t the same as sleeping, and he agreed. But it was better than nothing. The alcohol had helped, but two weeks had passed, and he was already edging back towards a dangerous level of sleep-deprivation.

What sleep he did have was fitful with colorless dreams.

Kakashi had long since perfected the use of chidori without serious personal damage, but unfortunately, salt water conducted electricity, and the air was humid enough that Kakashi was sweating like a pig. His concentration wavered and lightning shot across the surface of his skin, a racking pain akin to hundreds of tiny needles dipped in fire. Kakashi hissed, dissipating the jutsu. 

Bringing his palm to his face, he examined it in the vacuum of abrupt silence. 

First degree burns. He could try again. 

He _would_ , as soon as his unwanted visitor left.

They had been wise enough not to approach him with chidori active, and their footsteps were deliberately heavy, alerting him of their incoming approach. They were on his blind side, but Kakashi waited until they came into view rather than turning his head to see.

“You’re going to hurt someone, you know.”

The voices in Kakashi’s head were normally polite enough to restrict their mimicry to the dead. 

Which, unfortunately, meant that Umino Iruka really was there.

Also unfortunately, from his opening statement, Kakashi had no idea if Iruka had shrugged off the Prism at the bar as a coincidence, or if he was there to accuse Kakashi of hiding it. Either way, it didn’t sound like a compliment, though for a shinobi it could easily be taken as such.

Glancing up from his cross-legged position on the ground, Kakashi scrutinized Iruka with one half-lidded eye. “Maa, that is what they pay me for.” 

“Not your comrades. Or yourself.” Iruka rested his fists on his hips in a posture Kakashi recognized from lectures to pre-genin. The teacher’s expression was calm in contrast. “You’ve been on edge since the chūnin exams. People are worried about you.”

“People?”

“Anko. Kurenai.” A pause. “ _Guy_.”

There was a strange tilt to the way Iruka said the last name, a harshness about it that flattened the vowel and tone.

Kakashi couldn’t identify the reason for that tone, but he called bullshit on the words. Anko and Guy were loud enough that any concern of theirs would have echoed through the village in minutes, and Kurenai was direct enough to tell Kakashi herself. She wouldn’t have sent a random chūnin to do it.

And he would be a random choice, as far as the rest of the world was concerned. The human other than Kakashi who had known of their connection was dead.

Hiruzen kept his word until the end.

Iruka cut Kakashi off before he could respond.

“Me.”

Kakashi’s protests died on his lips, leaving behind a bitter residue that clung to the scratchy walls of his throat. “If the Godaime trusts me to carry out missions, then her judgement shouldn’t be questioned.”

“I’m not questioning her judgement. But you know as well as I do that individuals are sacrificed for the good of the whole, even unintentionally, and even when they don’t have to be. She has too much on her plate to look for things she doesn’t want to see.” 

It wasn’t the lack of time that caused Tsunade’s willful ignorance, Kakashi thought. It had been part of her personality for years, since she left the village and forgot those who needed her, who were dying around her. Even back then, there had never been a medic-nin like Tsunade of the Sannin. She didn’t train a replacement before abandoning them, and took with her the most promising apprentice. How many shinobi died? How many crippled? How many could Tsunade, could her knowledge, have saved?

Then again, Kakashi understood the urge to run away from things that were painful. There was fight, and there was flight. The former was so easy when the demons were real. There was nothing more difficult when they were inside the mind. 

Which one was Kakashi doing now?

“I’ve seen your mission log, Kakashi-san. You haven’t spent more than a day in Konoha unless you were hospitalized. You’re hardly slouching these days, you’re so jumpy. You nearly took Ebisu’s head off when he touched you outside the Jōnin Standy Station yesterday. Which admittedly was stupid of him, but not worthy of being pinned to the wall with a kunai.” 

That, Kakashi took some offense to, because he thought he had showed remarkable restraint. The kunai had deliberately skewered Ebisu’s sleeve, after all, not his flesh. 

“And,” Iruka concluded with a deep breath, as if this were the most important and convincing part of his argument. “You look like you haven’t slept in months.”

Sadistic deities.

“I’ve been leading missions for over twenty years, Iruka-sensei. I can operate through a lot worse than this.”

It wasn’t any more than they were put through in ANBU, anyway, and it didn’t escape Kakashi’s notice that none of the people Iruka mentioned had served with an animal mask. Sometimes he felt as ANBU really was a different world, one that tainted anyone it touched, lowered their standards until ‘living’ was merely a definition of biological existence. 

The perfect tool was malleable enough to withstand pressure, and unyielding enough to hold an edge. ANBU got a finer edge than most.

It was heartening that Iruka hadn’t. 

It was frightening that many of their enemies had. 

Kakashi was torn between the conflicting urges to show Iruka every brutal thing in the world until he understood, until he was prepared—or to wrap him up in a barrier seal and preserve him with that good, kind heart untarnished.

Right. That was what the avoidance was for. 

_Kakashi_ was the tarnish.

“Those three elected you for this intervention? Guy doesn’t care enough to drop by himself?” 

Iruka grimaced, reply soaked in acerbity. “I’m sure he does.” 

Kakashi waited for long seconds, but Iruka didn’t explain the emotion behind his response. The chūnin bit his tongue and averted his eyes, discomfiture chipping at his frown. 

He shifted his weight for an unhappy moment before sitting on the grass in front of Kakashi, knees folded properly beneath him, fists on his thighs. 

“Look, they didn’t _say_ they were worried, exactly, just.... exchanged looks. But it doesn’t take a genius to see you’re going to burn out. I’ve seen it happen to jōnin before. If I can—”

“You can’t.” Kakashi interrupted. He pressed his stinging palm to the cool grass, soothing the burn, and reminding himself of the reasons for it. “I’m sorry, sensei, but this is none of your concern.”

Iruka didn’t bring up his anger fast enough to hide the flash of hurt. It gnawed at Kakashi’s heart with each laborious beat. “Maybe not, but you have it anyway. You’re important. To Konoha. To Team Seven.” 

Kakashi hated everything about this. He hated that he was wasting valuable time he could be using to train, to grow stronger, to protect Konoha better. He hated that Konoha needed protection. He hated that he was weak enough for Iruka to be concerned about him. He hated that Iruka had never cared before. He hated that Iruka was good enough to care now. He hated that he wished Iruka would care _more_. Would touch him and hold him like he had so many others.

He hated that Iruka might actually do that, if he asked. But not because it was Kakashi, or at least not _purely_. Because it was someone in need. Because that was the sort of kind, comforting person Iruka was. Kind enough to care about trash. Kind enough to not heap on him the blame he deserved.

“I’m not their leader anymore. The Sannin are.” Kakashi stood, and Iruka scrambled to follow. “Feel free to accost Tsunade on her drinking habits anytime you want.” 

Each of the Sannin were better shinobi than Kakashi. If one discounted ethics, at least. That little problem unfortunately applied to all three, to some degree, but at least their Hokage was the best out of them, even including the years she went AWOL. Sakura would do well under her. Naruto was stubborn enough not to pick up Jiraiya’s selfish habits. And Sasuke…

Kakashi was the one who fucked up there, who thought a few words would be enough to start healing a septic, festering wound. He would be the one to take responsibility, when it came to that. 

“I didn’t mean as a jōnin-sensei.” Iruka followed doggedly as Kakashi started towards the edge of the training field. How much chakra would it take to Body Flicker all the way to his apartment? Too much, or not enough? “You’re important as a person. Naruto cares about you. Sakura, too. I had lunch with her last week. She said she hadn’t seen you since Sasuke left. If you spoke to her, maybe—”

“Maybe what?” Kakashi’s voice came sharp and brittle, a champagne glass shattering on concrete and wielding the shards. “What would you have me tell her, Iruka-sensei? That it’ll all be _ok_? That Sasuke will come back and everything will be the way it was before?”

Because he had already done that. All Kakashi had ever given her was empty assurances. Empty promises. That’s what he had given all of them. And now they all knew him for what he was: a liar. 

A weak one, at that.

“Tell her you’re proud of her.”

Kakashi stopped walking. Iruka nearly brushed past him before registering the difference. 

Several emotions flitted through Iruka’s face in turn: surprise, bewilderment, something akin to sorrow. 

_Or was it pity?_

“You do know that she respects you. Don’t you?” Iruka took a step closer, peering earnestly into Kakashi’s eye. “They all do. You aren’t just their jōnin-sensei. They don’t look at you and see the Copy-nin, or the sharingan. _They see Hatake Kakashi_.”

That...

That didn’t explain anything. 

What was there other than the Copy-nin? The sharingan? The ANBU? The jōnin? What was _Hatake Kakashi_?

Maybe Iruka could tell him. Maybe Iruka saw this elusive Hatake Kakashi, too. 

Maybe that person was someone Iruka would want to hold.

Maybe Kakashi really just needed to sleep. 

Without colors and absences and pain and lightning coursing through his nightmares and drenching him in sweat that was slick like blood.

Iruka took a step forward.

He was close, too close. 

His hand bridged the gap between them and Kakashi should have panicked, but he was trying to understand and Iruka was _seeing_ him, seeing more than Kakashi could fathom, and he thought for a desperate, wild second that he wanted to take anything Iruka would give, even if it would break everything. 

Perhaps _because_ it would break everything. 

Then it would be over.

Iruka raised his hand. 

Each millimetre was telegraphed, but certain. 

That finger rose and aligned and... 

Poked Kakashi in the chest. 

Hard. Hard enough that Kakashi could feel the pressure through his flak jacket. Hard enough that he could almost imagine there was nothing between them at all. 

“I was wrong about the chūnin exams, you know. They were ready. And they did grow stronger because of it. And Sasuke…” Iruka let out a deep breath and shook his head. He poked harder for a moment, painfully digging into Kakashi’s sternum. 

Then, slowly, his hand and his expression relaxed. 

His fingers splayed wide, his palm flattened, and he pressed his lifeline over Kakashi’s heart. The pressure was no longer violent, but firm. Solid. Unbearably real.

Iruka didn’t hold him in any way, kept his fingers from gripping, made it so easy for Kakashi to get away that merely learning back would suffice. 

But Kakashi was bound to him. He had been for years.

He didn’t know if he had a heartbeat to feel, but Iruka watched that spot as though he did, as if he could see the swirl of the Prism beneath Kakashi’s vest, although none could exist. 

Their skin didn’t meet at any point, and yet Kakashi had never been so intimately connected to anyone or anything in his life. 

Iruka’s voice fell quiet, creating an illusion of privacy, as if they were laying in a familiar bed rather than standing in the middle of an open field.

How Kakashi wished they were.

“There were a lot of us that should have done more for him, and he may have still made that choice even if we had. You shouldn’t destroy yourself over him when there are people here that need you.” 

It sounded, to Kakashi’s ravenous ears, like an _‘_ I _need you_ ’.

Kakashi choked down a desperate sound that had no right to be. It never breached the air, but Iruka’s gaze traced the length of Kakashi’s mask as if he could see it rise. When he reached Kakashi’s wide, unblinking eye, his own turned gentle and he dropped his hand. 

No.

Why?

Kakashi wanted it back, wanted _everything_ , but he couldn’t ask.

That was the one thing he had never been able to do.

“So stop acting like you’re a machine and take a few days off, no training, no chakra. Walk your dogs. Buy a book or something. Shodaime knows you need some new material.” He added the last in a mutter. “And when your head is on straight, go tell Sakura she’s doing a good job. Or I’ll come find you again, and next time, I won’t be so polite.”

With that, he turned on his heel, and left.

Kakashi was alone once more, lying beggared in a field of morning glories.

It took two days before Kakashi caught up on enough sleep to feel half-way himself again. He didn’t want to brave Sakura with anything less than crystalline mental clarity. 

As it turned out, he didn’t need it. Iruka was right. Sakura didn’t want his advice, or training, or to have heart-felt discussions about Naruto and Sasuke and the nature of revenge. All of the things he had feared, all the expectations he thought she would have and he would fail—none came to pass.

It was stilted, at first, trying to have a conversation avoiding the few topics they actually had in common. 

Then Kakashi awkwardly asked about her lessons with Tsunade, and everything changed. She told him about the books she bought, the jutsu she was practicing, the different ways chakra flowed through the body and how to manipulate it. Kakashi listened and nodded, ignoring the few minor errors and naïve assertions. That was Tsunade’s job to correct.

It took nearly ten minutes for her excitement to dry. 

She looked up at him with determination as hard as jade, and told him she would become a kunoichi strong enough to protect everyone she cared about. 

And maybe she would even surpass Kakashi, she added with a coy smile. 

A smile that, for once, wasn’t carefully crafted to secure anyone’s approval.

Kakashi swallowed and went to pat her head, the mannerism of his father’s that he had tried so hard to do for the kids. To work affection past his own barriers in that one, small way. 

Except they weren’t kids anymore. He changed track at the last moment, briefly squeezing her shoulder. 

That was something Minato had done for him. Something that had made him feel like an equal.

Somehow, when he wasn’t looking, she had grown up most of all.

Kakashi told her that he knew she could do it, and that he was proud of her.

Her surprise wrapped up his guilt and punched him squarely in the chest with it. 

But then she beamed, happy warmth painting her cheeks as pink as her hair. 

Kakashi wouldn’t need the sharingan to remember that sight for the rest of his life.

Somehow, _he_ was the cause of that smile, that fleeting happiness; and all he had had to do was try.

_What if trying was what made all the difference?_

If chakra depletion was being hit by an S-rank Earth jutsu, burn wounds were a rasengan wielded by the Yondaime.

Besides the high rate of infection when not treated properly in the field, they were extraordinarily difficult to heal with chakra. The most common medical technique for flesh wounds was one that regenerated cells at a quicker pace in an isolated location than in the rest of the body. 

Burns were uneven by nature. Without a skilled medic-nin who could alter the regeneration on a miniscule scale, and who took their time doing it over the course of several applications, it was easy to cause too much growth in healthier tissues and not enough in others. It left some of the ugliest scars Kakashi had ever seen. Morino Ibiki’s gnarled scalp was a good example, healed too quickly by a field medic because there was little other choice to save his life.

Kakashi preferred to let burns heal naturally beyond the basics required to not impede his work. It wasn’t that he cared about appearances—no one but medics would see most of his scars, anyway—but scar tissue could impede movement and flexibility, two things that were pivotal to Kakashi’s fighting style.

Unfortunately, his unintentional habit of chakra depletion meant that the medical-nins now had a captive patient who could barely turn his head, let alone argue effectively.

The one good thing about hospital beds was that they were nearly as hard as Kakashi’s mattress, which was nearly as hard as densely packed dirt. Softer surfaces left his spine out of alignment after a few days of chakra-paralysis. 

It probably wasn’t good that he had experienced it so often to have a preference for mattresses during it.

It wasn’t actually paralysis, of course, but damn close. His every limb felt like it was held down by an Akimichi, his lungs were compressed by the weight of his chest, and his head was filled with vicious gnomes attacking his skull with pickaxes. There was a particularly persistent gnome behind Obito’s eye, but it had traded in the pick for a shovel and was trying to free up his orbital socket, gouging out tissue at an excruciatingly slow pace. 

But the worst thing by far was that Kakashi couldn’t move. 

And he had a burn to be healed.

People milled around him like horse flies for twenty-four hours, checking temperatures and adjusting equipment, replacing IVs and pulling the sheet down to his waist to expose his flank, where the sizable burn had eaten through many layers of skin. 

The pain was bad, but it was almost ignorable compared to the constant, agonizing grate of vulnerability. 

He was enclosed on all sides, poked and prodded. He couldn’t even summon the mobility to wipe away the lingering touches his tormentors left. His skin tried to crawl away, but his muscles couldn’t obey, leaving him in a prison of his own making. 

Sleep was both plentiful and shitty. Fatigue drowned his consciousness every couple hours, but instinct dragged him back up with each intrusion. Paranoia and wasted adrenaline became his constant companions.

Realistically, his worst fear was unfounded. There was little to no chance of losing his mask. While his jōnin shirt had been removed, the nin who prepped him was an older woman named Kaede, and she was wise with experience. She cut the shirt around his neck to leave the mask itself intact. 

There might have been some rumors as to what happened to medics who took advantage of Kakashi’s less-than-mobile states. 

They may not have all been rumors. 

Plus, Kakashi had a literal guard dog nestled in between his legs. Pakkun had been with him for the final jutsu that put the nail in his ambulatory-coffin, which meant the pack was alerted to his state. They took turns staking out the hospital until Kakashi was admitted, then slipped into his room as soon as Kaede opened the window. 

His first real words outside of a report were that he hoped she never retired. She grinned and told him to shut up, she liked him better when he was unconscious.

That firmly placed her near the top of Kakashi’s short ‘most likeable’ list.

It was Bisuke who was on guard duty when Iruka came.

Kakashi’s eye flew open, his lid grating on the dry cornea, as a soft knock tore him from sleep.

“Come in.” Bisuke called. He lifted his nose from Kakashi’s knee, peering at the newcomer as the door slid open. “You don’t smell like a medic.”

Iruka’s voice came into focus before Kakashi’s blurry vision could settle.

“I’ll take that as a good thing, since I’m not. I’m here to visit Kakashi-san.” Iruka lowered his head politely. “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Umino Iruka.”

Bisuke’s tail thumped against Kakashi’s foot, sending tiny sparks of pain along the sole. In this state, even the pressure of the sheet was more than Kakashi wanted, but he was fiercely glad it was pulled up to his collarbone. 

It didn’t stop his heart from working double-time, but it made the adrenaline due less to anxiety and more to _Iruka_ , which was more pleasurable a cause.

“Oh, I like you. Do you know most people don’t even greet us?” The dog chirped. “I’m Bisuke. I don’t need to chase him out, do I, Boss?”

Iruka stalled, waiting by the door with a questioning look. In truth, Kakashi had only had his dogs chase out two people from his hospital rooms before, because the only ones who visited Kakashi were jōnin who weren’t likely to be daunted by a single ninken. The two he had bothered with anyway were Guy and Genma; the former was so moved by his ninken’s protective instincts that he left of his own accord, and the latter found the whole thing just as amusing as Kakashi’s physical state at the time. Hence the reason for the throwing out.

He should tell Iruka to go. 

He was defenseless. 

A medic could come in and touch him or Iruka at any moment. Even without the Prism, he shouldn’t want anyone near him in this state.

“He can stay.” Kakashi rasped.

Perhaps chakra was directly connected to will power. That would explain why Naruto had so much of both, and why Kakashi was a barren wasteland.

With a small smile, Iruka pulled up the uncomfortable visitor’s chair and sank into it, dropping his satchel to the floor. It made a heavy thunk. There was chalk dust on his fingers and an ink stain on his sleeve. It must have been a school day. “Sorry, I won’t intrude for long. You look exhausted.”

“S’not that bad.” He mumbled. “Had worse.”

“That isn’t reassuring in the least."

“I’ll be fine. Out in a few days.” 

Iruka didn’t look convinced, but he let it go, looking down at his hands, fingers curling on his thighs. 

They had gotten to the reason for the visit. Kakashi knew there had to be one, but it would have been nice if there weren’t.

“I wanted to thank you, for talking to Sakura.”

That was nearly a month before, but Kakashi had been on non-stop missions since then; this time, only ones that Tsunade ordered, rather than picking up extras himself. 

It shouldn’t surprise him as a topic. Iruka had proven he was stubborn enough to apologize for a single interaction after nearly two years. He wasn’t the type to let something go until he felt it was resolved, one way or another.

Kakashi forced truth through parched lips. “You were right. I was being selfish.” 

“It’s easy to ignore what we don’t want to see.” Iruka said quietly. 

It was. Kakashi had been doing it his whole life. 

He ignored Sakura’s abilities, ignored Sasuke’s pain, ignored Naruto for his entire damn life. Ignored Iruka whenever it suited him to, ignored Minato’s efforts to give him human connection, ignored his soulmate’s messages before he even knew who they were. 

Ignored his father’s teachings.

Until Iruka mentioned Tsunade. How she would sacrifice someone through willful ignorance. 

Kakashi realized then: Sakumo wouldn’t. 

He spent years of his childhood trying to convince himself that his father was wrong. Obito’s words were the catalyst that started him towards accepting outwardly what he inwardly believed, what he always _wanted_ to believe: that his father was a great shinobi. That the flaws that had led his father to public disgrace, were also the ones that made him a good man. A good father. 

When Kakashi was four, his father gave him the mask and warned him of the dangers. But his warning wasn’t strictly that.

He had said that Kakashi would have to be wise and strong enough to protect both himself and his soulmate. That Kakashi’s life wasn’t just his own.

And it wasn’t. Because it was his soulmate’s, as well. It was his Hokage’s. His village’s. His father believed in the Will of Fire, in the bonds with others that made life truly worth living. 

Sakumo took his own life when those bonds were snatched away. For so many years, Kakashi tried not to wonder why he wasn’t enough, enough reason for his father to stay.

It took Kakashi twenty years to come to a conclusion: 

Sakumo believed he was hurting Kakashi. 

His tainted reputation, fallen name, depression. Sakumo believed Kakashi would be better off without him. 

It wasn’t true. 

Kakashi would have given anything to have his father back. 

Anything to have Sakumo, Rin and Obito, Minato and Kushina. He would die a million times over if it meant he could give them chances to smile again. If he could feel Rin take him by the wrist, his father’s rare pat on the head, Minato’s hand on his shoulder. 

But even knowing he couldn’t, he wouldn’t give up the memories, painful as they could be. He cherished his loved ones in pictures, at the memorial stone, in the echoes that existed within Naruto. 

It was never Sakumo’s reputation that Kakashi needed. It wasn’t kind words, or comfort, or home-cooked meals. None of that had mattered. All he wanted was to know someone was there. That someone cared. That someone was willing to put effort into him, that he was _worth_ that effort. 

That was all Naruto had needed, too, and no one had tried. Kakashi, because he was a depressed fourteen-year-old assassin who thought he had nothing to give an infant whose parents he had failed. Jiraiya, because… 

Well, Kakashi’s philosophical musings had only taken him so far.

The point was, Kakashi had assumed what people needed, and assumed he couldn’t provide it. He had reduced human interaction down to compliments and physical affection, to the domestic scenes he read in books and saw echoed in the masses. But those things weren’t important, at least not solely. Not to everyone.

Iruka wasn’t fragile or desperate. He wasn’t searching for an illusive soulmate out of some foolish idea that they would complete him. He didn’t _need_ Kakashi, not in the way that vapid romances and preteen girls loved to fantasize. He didn’t need protection from himself. He was a complete person, whole and self-assured.

But he would need effort. 

He was worth that effort to Kakashi. 

Iruka said that people could change. That a person wasn’t the same as they were at birth. 

Kakashi believed that. If people were simply born good or bad, then Rin’s sacrifice was merely a product of nature rather than of the person herself. Then Sasuke was destined to forever seek power and revenge. Accountability went to nil. Everything Guy had achieved, every choice Tenzo made to reject Root, would mean nothing. 

Choices were what determined a person. 

Kakashi was once trash that would have left a comrade for the sake of a mission. He was a horrible teacher who had neglected his students until he no longer could, and then it was too late. He was a living weapon who had no idea how to hold someone without cutting them.

But maybe he didn’t _have_ to be.

Bisuke nudged Kakashi’s thigh with his nose, looking up at his master with round, uncertain eyes.

Kakashi could change. He could try, at least. 

See if there was any way Iruka would give him the chance to make that effort.

...But today wasn’t the day to start. 

If Kakashi was going to reveal himself, he would do it without painkillers and chakra depletion. And he’d probably wear a shirt for it.

“You know, the Boss can’t really move.” Bisuke piped up, breaking the silence. His tail thumped twice, his furry chin resting on Kakashi’s knee. “And he’s been on missions a lot. We’ve been working _all_ the _time_. I haven’t had my ears scratched in _weeks_.”

That was both a gross exaggeration and a flagrant bid for affection.

 _Shameless_.

Iruka would see through that. He dealt with dozens of pre-genin all day, he wouldn’t be so easily duped.

Looking up, Iruka gave a startled laugh. “Would you like me to pet you, Bisuke-san?”

Huh.

_Could it really be that easy?_

The honorific made Bisuke’s tail wag so hard his butt wiggled, but Kakashi’s pained wince reminded him to stay still. The mutt replied as nonchalantly as he could manage, which was not very. “I mean, if you wanna, I guess I wouldn’t mind.”

Iruka scooted forward until his knees brushed the bed, reaching out to stroke Bisuke’s ear. He leaned his head into Iruka’s hand. After a minute, he shuffled on all fours, carefully so as not to disturb Kakashi, to put more of himself in easy petting-range. 

Kakashi was pretty sure Iruka didn’t have any pets or summons, but he scratched the base of Bisuke’s ears and rubbed his cheeks as though he turned canines into piles of mush for a living.

Maybe, if all else failed, Iruka would like Kakashi as a dog. He was good at henges.

Nothing more was said, but Iruka sometimes glanced to the bed’s actual occupant. 

Kakashi never looked away, and so Iruka’s blush never fully left.

Iruka didn’t touch Kakashi. Not through the sheets, not for a moment, not even accidentally. Not while Kakashi could do nothing to stop him. 

He pet Bisuke with attentive devotion. 

Kakashi’s watched and wanted until his body could no longer support the weight of it.

When he awoke, Iruka was gone and Shiba was taking over Bisuke’s shift. Bisuke hopped off the bed to the half-open window.

“Iruka left that for you, Boss. He said you’d like it.” Bisuke indicated the rolling medical table with a tilt of his head, then was gone.

“You want me to read you the title, Boss?” Shiba asked doubtfully, setting his paws up on the table to look at the hardcover that was spread open to the title page. He was one of the worst in the pack with written language. 

“No, I’ll be able to read it tomorrow.” 

Nerves fluttered in Kakashi’s stomach that night, pleasant and nauseous anticipation. He was right; by the next day, he was able to move his upper body to some degree, enough to hold the book upright for almost a full minute. 

_A Scoundrel’s Grace_ by Hideyuki Tamiko. It looked to be a fantasy adventure with a sprinkling of romance. Kakashi had his doubts that it would be as juicy as Jiraiya’s works.

A slip of lined paper stuck out at the top. Pulling it out revealed a simple note written in neat hand. 

_‘You never did get new material, did you?’_

Closing the book, Kakashi made it drop onto the mattress beside him, arms already burning from strain, but the gaudy pink and blue cover caught his attention.

The dust-jacket read _Icha Icha Collections_. 

Iruka had given him a respectable book in a colorful, smutty shell.

Laughter scoured Kakashi’s throat and bit into his wound, devolving quickly into a pained wheezing that had Shiba raising his head in alarm. 

Whether Iruka knew his soulmate’s identity or not, he had at least guessed the squirrel’s.

When Kakashi was released from the hospital, his first stop was to the Hatake Estate. His second was to Iruka’s apartment, during school hours. He slipped a book in the mail slot and left for Hokage Tower to answer the Godaime’s summons. 

This time, the book and the cover matched. A slim, subdued paperback waited in Iruka’s genkan for its new owner’s return:

_The Tale of The Utterly Gutsy Shinobi_


	7. Violet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is the next to last chapter! I would love to hear what you guy's think going into the final part. I've been so ecstatic by the response to this story, and I appreciate each and every one of you. <3

Kakashi didn’t realize the full meaning of the Prism until it disappeared. 

In ANBU, he was out of the village more often than not, returning only to get medical treatment and receive new orders. It wasn’t easy by any means, but serving his Hokage, living as he was told, nameless and faceless… it became a reliable system. There were difficult decisions, some of the worst of his life—many that ended the lives of others; but he wasn’t listless. He always knew what he was doing, because the big picture was the Hokage’s purview and Kakashi merely followed along. He created strategies, implemented them, adapted them when necessary to achieve the primary objective, but he wasn’t the one who had to decide on the primary objective in the first place.

But there was an inherent disconnect. 

He didn’t buy fresh produce at the market, because he wouldn’t be around to eat it. He didn’t hang around the Jōnin Standby Station, or the hot springs, or make friends with his comrades. He didn’t even go to the Konoha hospital, instead getting treated at ANBU headquarters where everyone was sterile masks and codenames and as emotionally dead as he was. Or, at least, like they all pretended to be.

Sometimes, he had barely remembered Konoha existed. 

But the Prism always reminded him. 

Before he knew his soulmate was in Konoha, it was at least a testament that something else existed, outside of his limited world of steel and porcelain. Even if he couldn’t see it, even if he didn’t know it or want it. It was evidence of someone living a better life than Kakashi did, which was consoling and embittering in turns.

After witnessing the countdown, the swirling colors were proof that Konoha herself still stood. Although Kakashi couldn’t see it, her inhabitants were safe. There was someone, something, left to fight for. A home left for him to return. What Minato and Rin had died for lived on. 

Long before he knew his soulmate was Iruka, those hues had provided him with some measure of comfort, reluctantly though it was taken.

After Iruka, it was tantalizing glimpses of paradise.

In the last year, the Prism hadn’t appeared beneath his clothes. Not that he could see. 

It took Kakashi three days to notice when it disappeared from the rest of him, too. 

Normally, it cloaked his fingers several times a day, from either Academy students or brushing hands at the mission desk. If Kakashi counted correctly, he had been out of the village for eight days, which meant it was Thursday. Iruka should have been touching people left and right. But there was nothing. 

Kakashi travelled the next two days with his gloves off, sleeves rolled up. 

Pale skin stared back at him, haunting him, reflecting moon and starlight and nothing else. 

At one point, Kakashi thought he saw a maroon splash, but then the sting sunk in. He had never been so disappointed to see his own blood. 

It was another day back to the village, but Kakashi made it in a matter of hours. His sleeves and gloves were back in place long before he passed the gates. 

He had been gone for less than two weeks. Only one month since Iruka visited him in the hospital. One month since Kakashi read the entirety of _‘A Scoundrel’s Grace’_ in a single night. One month since his hopes began to blossom with the morning glories.

One month, and Konoha seemed like an entirely different world. 

Nothing _was_ different, not really—people walked the streets in the dying light of the sun, the trees were the same shades of emerald as when he had left, and every building stood intact. But it felt hollow, insubstantial, like a poorly-crafted genjutsu. The colors were dull and lifeless. Kakashi couldn’t associate anything before him with the word “home”. 

It wasn’t right. Nothing was right. Nothing was pulling him here. Nothing was safe. 

Not until he found Iruka. 

Kakashi didn’t remember learning his address at any point, but he found himself in front of it nonetheless. The windows were shut, curtains drawn, door locked. Kakashi could sense no one inside. He could break in, see how long it had been since someone had entered, but the wards were active. That meant Iruka was alive. 

_Unless someone replaced them._

No. Why would they? 

Iruka was alive. 

There were five other likely locations: Hokage Tower, the Academy, _The Sharpened Kunai_ , _Ichiraku_ , and the hospital. 

The last would take the longest to search, while the first two were not only nearby, but stationed close together. That was the obvious place to start. If he didn’t find Iruka there, he would summon his ninken to check the other locations, and Bisuke to track down the scent specifically since he knew Iruka best.

As it turned out, Kakashi’s ninken were unnecessary. He hadn’t even entered school grounds when he spotted someone sitting cross-legged on the water tower that overlooked the Academy. 

His cramped stomach eased, his pulse slowing, relief cresting as he recognized Iruka’s familiar form.

Alive.

Kakashi could have left. He had his confirmation. 

But it still wasn’t _right_. 

The wind ruffled Iruka’s ponytail, the only sign of movement. Otherwise, he was perfectly immobile, a stone lion-dog guarding its temple. Kakashi couldn’t see his eyes from this distance, or his smile, or his breathing; he couldn’t verify that this was _Iruka_. 

He needed to make sure. 

Iruka didn’t stir as Kakashi walked up the tower behind him, boots sticking to the metal with chakra, leaving faint traces of dirt behind. Marks. Kakashi pushed down thoughts of barren skin, the missing Prism, the strange figure that Iruka cut out against the orange-and-red sky. 

Once he saw him, heard him, he would know. That was all he needed.

When he got to the top of the tower, he stopped, watching up close as dark brown strands whipped around Iruka’s collar where they had slipped from their binding. He must not have redone it since morning.

“Kakashi-san.” Iruka greeted flatly, words nearly swallowed by the wind. He didn’t look around, gaze fixed on the Academy, or its grounds, or possibly something only he could see. “I guess you’re not here for the view.”

It was cold. The wind, the elevation, the hollowed sensation of non-existence, the olive green of Iruka’s vest. None of it was warm. 

“Maa, I thought I saw a kitten stranded up here, so I came to do my honorable duty and rescue it. I must have been mistaken.” Kakashi waited a moment. Iruka didn’t tell him to leave. “But you know, now that I’m here, it’s a lovely sunset.” 

He lowered himself beside Iruka. One boot dangled off the curved edge of the tower while he braced the other on the surface, arm resting on his knee. He tried to look at whatever Iruka saw, but he couldn’t. His eyes were drawn, as always, to scarred brown skin, and the shine of the Konoha leaf.

It would be cool to the touch. 

“I guess you heard.” 

There was no good way to answer that statement, so Kakashi didn’t. 

“She was in the class I assisted before Naruto’s. This was only her third mission as a chūnin. She never got a chance to lead one.” A pause. “She would have been a good leader.”

Ah.

“I’ve lost people before, but not someone under my command. Not a child.” Iruka stated in a dreaded monotone, one that Kakashi could never have imagined the passionate man was capable of using. 

He didn’t state the obvious: that if she was a chūnin, she had long since ceased to be a child.

It wouldn’t matter to Iruka.

Iruka’s shoulders trembled, but his voice stayed strong. Too strong. “How did you deal with it?”

Vividly, viscerally, Kakashi was reminded of all the reasons he stayed away for all those years. Why he should step back now.

But he was the one sitting here, and so he was the one Iruka needed. At least for one minute, one night. 

“I didn’t.”

The first reaction. Iruka turned his head to frown at Kakashi, eyes straining to focus on him after what might have been hours staring into the distance. “You’ve never lost a subordinate?”

“I didn’t deal with it.” Kakashi gave a one-shouldered shrug. He wanted to look away, but there were flecks of citrine and walnut in those irises. They were a tiny glimpse of what he wanted to see. 

Flecks of anger, too. That was also good.

“If you’re telling me to get over it—”

“That’s not it.” Kakashi interrupted. His hands burned, phantom sensations of heat and electricity, crushing bone, popping cartilage. He curled them into his thighs, nails pressing into the dirty fabric. He hadn’t bothered stopping by his apartment, or the Hokage’s office. Those could wait. “I added another mask, took a codename, and started reading porn in public. I hid instead of dealing with it for years. You’re better than me. You can skip those first steps and move to the last one.” 

Iruka blinked. “Reading porn in public?”

Kakashi wondered if Iruka had slept more than a few hours in the last few days. Likely not. “Maa, you could do that, too. I have some more recommendations. But I meant the last stage of grief.”

Iruka could never read porn in public, anyway. Maybe a fade-to-black sex scene, but Iruka was too honest, too open, to hide his reactions. Kakashi knew that all along, but trying to catch a teacher reading smut had been easier to admit to, in his own mind, than stalking someone with whom he was infatuated. 

‘Interesting’ was safer than ‘mesmerizing’. 

“Oh.” Iruka looked back down at the Academy yard. He sounded like he’d just had his first taste of bitter melon. “Yeah, acceptance. I’ve read the textbooks. They were great when I was a kid and it was my parents, or teaching my classes the theoreticals. But none of them say what to do when it’s my fault. When it was _my_ bad call. When I have to answer to her future, her parents, her little broth—” 

Iruka choked, covering his eyes with his arm. His entire body shuddered as a ragged breath shook him apart. 

Kakashi imagined he could feel his body heat, just barely, in the inches that separated them. 

This was what Kakashi thought he could never do, what he would never _want_ to do for anyone. What he never cared enough to try beyond empty promises. Not until Iruka told him he could.

Bridging the distance between them was not easy. It was worse than patting the children’s heads, something he knew with certainty he could control, pull back from, something that wouldn’t possibly cause the Prism if he didn’t wish it. 

Kakashi was starkly aware of every millimetre of movement, every line of Iruka’s body in relation to his own. Spots with exposed skin on both of them highlighted like thermal vision, screaming at his instincts with signs emblazoned _’danger’, ‘fight’, ‘run’_.

Gently, he placed his gloved hand between Iruka’s shoulder blades.

His fingertips rested just below the bare skin of his nape.

Iruka didn’t move other than to take in another quaking breath.

Kakashi didn’t know what to do, now that he had initiated contact, but he didn’t want to move away. He could feel each inhalation, the material of the chūnin vest, the sniffs Iruka took as he tried to dry stifled sobs. 

Kakashi felt so much.

But it wasn’t overwhelming.

It was filling.

Filling him up, making him whole. 

The last of the colors leached from the sky, dark blue descending in a shutter over the sunset.

Eventually, Iruka let his arm drop from his eyes, and he leaned back. 

Kakashi thought at first he was moving away. He jerked, ready to retreat at the first sign of unwelcome. 

But Iruka didn’t reject Kakashi’s touch—he sank into it.

Pale fingertips naturally slid past the collar of Iruka’s shirt as the teacher’s head tipped back, falling to the soft strands at his hairline. Kakashi curved his fingers, molding them to the gentle slope, heart stuttering in his chest as he took in Iruka’s revealed features. 

His eyes were puffy and rimmed in red, but closed. A lingering tear track shined at the corner of his scar, and his lips were heavily chapped in a way that made Kakashi’s survival instincts scream dehydration, swollen as if he’d been biting them.

Kakashi would make him tea, if Iruka would let him.

“Rather than acceptance, I think of it as integration.” He said quietly. 

Iruka’s eyelids fluttered open and he met Kakashi’s gaze, open and waiting. He didn’t displace Kakashi’s hand. 

“You’ll never forget or move on. The bonds you had with her have been cut. Those threads are loose, tangling in places they were never supposed to reach. Some people might be able to cut the threads at the root, or dig them out.”

“Is that what you did?” Iruka murmured. Kakashi was far too observant, far too conscious of the empty space, to think that he imagined Iruka leaning ever so slightly closer.

“I tried.” He had. So very, very hard. “But I couldn’t. And then I realized that I didn’t want to.” 

He suppressed the urge to adjust his mask, pull it higher on his face, as if it would help him hide from unbearable truths. He focused on the texture of soft skin under his thumb.

This wasn’t about Kakashi—it was for Iruka. And he could stand a few more minutes of this awful, grating honesty, if it helped his mate. Iruka was empathetic; he wouldn’t respond to theoretical ideas and well-written philosophies. He needed to hear from someone who had experienced it, and Kakashi was the person on hand. 

“Someone once told me that those who abandon their comrades are scum. Those who don’t respect the memories of their comrades are, too.” Iruka’s shoulder brushed his and stayed there. Kakashi’s breath hitched. 

Iruka watched him. 

“Weave those loose threads back into your life. Make them part of yourself, and think of them often. Visit the memorial stone, burn incense, prepare offerings, frame a picture, drink yourself blind every year, talk to the dead, spy on their families—however you choose to do it. Grieve. Just remember that, if you lose yourself, you can’t protect the rest of your comrades. If you allow her loss to paralyze you, with fear or guilt, then you won’t be able to pass on your Will of Fire.”

Iruka’s watery gaze was close, and every moment was fraught with the desire to pull him in or push him away. He could no longer see colors in the brown of Iruka’s eyes, only a darkness so vast it could have been space itself, with nebulas and galaxies and lush worlds hidden within an infinite void. 

But he knew the colors were there. 

Kakashi smiled. “It’s exactly as you told me, Iruka-sensei. Honor her memory, but don’t forget that you hold the bonds of many. Few are strong enough to carry the chains of the Kyuubi’s Jinchuuriki. Even fewer would think of them as Uzumaki Naruto. Use the memories she left to strengthen your resolve, so that you can anchor those who remain.”

Even if it would kill him.

Akatsuki searched for Naruto. More eventually would, even if they failed. A jinchūriki was always a target, and Naruto wasn’t hidden away in the village like most. There was no doubt in Kakashi’s mind that Iruka would become a target, as the most precious person to Konoha’s jinchūriki. 

It wouldn’t matter to Iruka. He would choose Naruto no matter what.

If he was going to be listed in Bingo Books the world over anyway, going to be hunted even without the Prism… maybe he would choose Kakashi, too. 

Maybe he would let Kakashi stay close enough to keep him safe. As much as was possible.

Tears overcame Iruka’s scar, glistening and clear, trailing down his cheeks and dripping from his jaw. He made no move to hide them. 

They conquered Kakashi’s breath, held his soul captive. 

They released him only when Iruka rested his head on Kakashi’s shoulder. His cheek pressed against Kakashi’s vest. Their thighs brushed.

For untold minutes, Kakashi held Iruka, whose grief leaked softly from tired eyes. 

It wasn’t until the air dried them all, and Iruka gently pulled away, that Kakashi realized Konoha was real once more.

Kakashi’s hand dropped to the cool metal behind Iruka. 

It should have felt like loss, but Iruka had found himself once more.

Kakashi couldn’t regret a single thing. Even if he never had this again.

Iruka cleared his throat, staring down at his knees.

“ _‘The Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Shinobi’_... Naruto was named after the main character.”

“A little better than just a ramen topping, hm?” Kakashi hummed. “I admit, Jiraiya doesn’t have the most originality in naming schemes.”

“He isn’t Jiraiya’s son, is he?” 

Kakashi’s eye widened at the wrinkle-nosed grimace on Iruka’s face. He barked a sudden laugh, one that had Iruka looking over at him in surprise. “No. The one thing in which Jiraiya can be said to have restraint is birth control.”

For someone like the Toad Sage, there was probably not much more frightening than being tied down by a family. Even if Jiraiya had sired a child, Kakashi couldn’t see him raising it. 

It wasn’t that surprising, after all, that Jiraiya hadn’t met Naruto once in the first thirteen years of his life.

“To think, there was another person out there who loved Jiraiya’s books as much as you.” Iruka’s lips quirked into a wry smile. “Unless _you_ have something to confess?”

“Jōnin aren’t allowed to take on their own blood in a genin team.” He pointed out, he thought rather reasonably.

Iruka’s eyebrow rose, other side of his mouth rising to make a full smile. “That’s the only reason you can’t be his father?”

Kakashi rubbed the back of his neck. “Ah, well, I was also fourteen.”

Rubbing his nose with his sleeve, Iruka nodded, apparently accepting that he wouldn’t receive a straight answer. 

In reality, Iruka had probably already figured it out and was merely seeking confirmation. There weren’t many Uzumaki left after the fall of Uzushio, and few made it to Konoha. While Kushina’s pregnancy was kept under wraps, it wouldn’t be difficult for any determined individual to put the pieces together.

Kakashi wished Naruto himself would, but the Hokage’s orders were absolute, even if the man who had issued them was now little more than bones in the earth.

“How old were you when you got your ninken?”

This was the part where Kakashi would typically skip out, either frustrating his interrogator with vague answers or disappearing altogether. Talking about himself simply wasn’t in his arsenal. 

But if Iruka needed distraction for the night, Kakashi would buy all-new tools.

Going through the years in his head, it took Kakashi a moment to come up with an answer. Those had been his ANBU days, and things such as birthdays and passage of time had ceased to matter, apart from counting how old Rin would have been every November fifteenth. 

“I was sixteen when I made the summoning contract with Pakkun. The last one to join the pack was Urushi, five years ago.”

“You know, I used to wonder why you had ninken.” Iruka commented. Kakashi tilted his head in silent question. “I thought you were more like a cat: proud, solitary, kind of an asshole.” 

Kakashi’s eye must have expressed his chagrin, because Iruka chuckled, a throaty, pleasant sound that expanded to fill Kakashi’s chest. 

It was the sound of that laugh that gave him the strength to keep his tone light, despite his anxious interest in the answer. “Maa, you don’t like me very much, do you?”

For someone so open, Iruka could be surprisingly difficult to understand. Determining his emotions was like looking for a single grain of sand within all of Suna. There were too many to count, and the methods by which they interconnected were unknowable to the naked eye. 

It took a few seconds for Iruka’s features to flit through various, unnameable shades.

He landed on grim resignation. 

“I do now.” 

That was enough.

If it meant Iruka would let Kakashi stay by his side, then ‘like’ was enough.

But it wasn’t, apparently, for Iruka.

He stared once more into the Academy grounds. This time, Kakashi traced his gaze to a lone wooden swing hanging from a large oak tree. 

“You’re my soulmate, aren’t you?”

Silence.

Iruka must have sensed how Kakashi tensed, how his heart stopped, how denial sat as a slippery weight on the tip of his tongue. 

He waited, unmoving, for the answer. 

Lies were part of a shinobi’s nature. Kakashi could tell them with ease, and often had.

But there was finality to Iruka’s tone. A request for closure rather than confirmation. 

He already knew, no matter what Kakashi said here. 

“Yes.”

Iruka’s shoulders slumped, knees drawing up until he could rest his forehead on them. It removed the last bit of contact they’d had. The space between them became immeasurably large. 

Kakashi thought about reaching out, about reclaiming his place in Iruka’s atmosphere, but his muscles reacted slower than Iruka’s shaky words came.

“Damn.” He sighed, evident in the rise and fall of his curved spine although the sounds themselves were muffled. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that.”

A kunai embedded in Kakashi's diaphragm, sharp and overwhelming, and he fought the twisting of his innards.

He choked down the crushed pulp of stubborn, lingering hope. 

So Iruka had made his choice.

Kakashi didn’t know when he had started deluding himself, why he had ever thought he would be accepted, that Iruka would see him as someone he could love—but at some point, he had. 

Worse than rejection was the tragic resignation in Iruka’s posture, his words, his voice.

Iruka must have been hoping for something, too.

Someone better than Kakashi.

“I’m sorry.” He murmured through numb lips.

Iruka flinched, then shook his head, eyes closed and hitai-ate scraping against the rough fabric of his uniform pants. 

“Don’t be. It’s not like you chose this. Though I wish you would have told me, back then.”

Kakashi didn’t know when exactly ‘back then’ was, but probably anytime in the past would have been better than never.

He was going to tell Iruka. He had decided to. Just not tonight.

He had waited too long. 

Silence settled around them, seeped into Kakashi’s bones, and he hadn’t noticed how the cool metal of the tower sucked out body heat until there was no more warmth for him to steal.

An owl hooted in the forest far away, behind and below them. As distant as Kakashi’s foolish, selfish hopes.

“Why didn’t you?” 

Kakashi owed it to Iruka to answer, didn’t he? He owed him this much.

“I didn’t want to hurt you.”

Iruka scoffed, finally raising his head to glare. The bloodshot, swollen status of his eyes should have lessened the effect, but it penetrated Kakashi as viscerally as any blade.

“You don’t think I would have preferred to be rejected? Once and for all, instead of reaching out to you, for _years_ , and being ignored even though you were right there, and—and then meeting you and guessing and hoping—”

Iruka’s face crumbled, despair and anger shaking down his supports.

“‘Right there’?” Kakashi repeated mechanically, thoughts spinning wildly but never gaining enough traction to turn the gears. “You knew your soulmate was in Konoha?”

That ground Iruka to a resounding halt. His brows furrowed and he shook his head. Paused, then shook it again. “Hiruzen didn’t tell you?”

The Sandaime had told him many things, but Kakashi couldn’t recall a single one that would be relevant to this. 

Staring at him in bewilderment, Iruka’s eyes slowly started to widen, suspicion rising in them. “Kakashi, you didn’t report your soulmate?”

“Of course I did.” He said, more curtly than intended in face of the accusation. “Shinobi Code 19 states that the Prism is to be used at the discretion of a shinobi’s direct commander. The Sandaime agreed not to tell you unless it became necessary for the safety of Konoha.” 

“Then that was… Before you joined ANBU?”

“No. After I got out.”

Iruka stopped breathing.

He swallowed audibly. 

“You… how’s that possible?” Iruka murmured. “That was only a few years ago.”

“You were nineteen.” 

“That was—I was already teaching. How could—” Iruka bit his tongue. His gaze trailed over Kakashi’s form, from the bandages securing his pants to his ankles, to the pouches on his belts, long sleeved shirt, vest, gloves, and finally, the mask. 

Whatever he saw there made a decision for him, and his eyes lifted to meet Kakashi’s. “I knew when you joined ANBU.” 

He presumed Iruka knew because of the seals incorporated into the tattoo when it was given. They ensured the ink would never fade and granted chakra-keyed access to the wards surrounding the ANBU complex. The way Kabuto had managed to masquerade as ANBU was by killing the original members on the day of the attack; long-term impersonation was practically impossible. 

One of the adults in Iruka’s life must have recognized the Prism marring his bicep in the distinctive pattern of those seals. Kakashi had raised that concern at the time, but the seal was only one step in the process, not enough to repeat the jutsu, and so it was considered worthwhile to induct him despite.

Several others with the Prism were considered worthwhile, too.

When Kakashi joined ANBU, he was thirteen, and the youngest shinobi ever inducted. Until Uchiha Itachi came along, beating him by two years. 

At the time, Kakashi had been wary, if not a touch disgruntled. But Itachi proved himself to be a capable shinobi and reliable team member, despite his age and his clan. They had worked well together. While Kakashi was his captain, they rarely spoke, but the necessary communication was easy and succinct, the silences unstrained. 

Maybe they should have talked more. 

Maybe it wouldn’t have changed a thing.

Maybe talking to Iruka now wouldn't change a thing, either. He had found out when he was nine years old that his soulmate was a merciless, dispassionate killer. Kakashi wouldn’t have wished that burden on an adult, let alone a child.

Iruka was a killer himself, a shinobi. He understood doing what was necessary for the sake of loyalty.

No one could call him dispassionate, though. No one would ever call him _cold_. 

Kakashi didn’t see that the logistics mattered so much as the fact that Iruka didn’t want him. But if they got this over with now, perhaps they could never discuss it again. Perhaps Iruka would ignore it and forgive him and maybe they could have something akin to friendship.

“But you didn’t know it was me?” 

“No.” Iruka curled his fingers over his kneecaps, gripping the fabric tightly. “How could _you_ not have? You didn’t see any of my messages?”

From the way Iruka had looked him over, Kakashi thought he knew the answer to that. “I didn’t want to.”

Iruka turned away.

There was more Kakashi could say, surely. Ways he could explain it. But the factors that had led to his decisions were too many, too varied, built upon the trauma of a life that Iruka had never led. It might have started with his father, but up until Rin’s death, Kakashi might have acted differently. If he saw a name when he was ten, or twelve, he might have been able to try. 

After Rin, he knew that he didn’t deserve to. 

In many ways, he still believed that. But he no longer thought that what he deserved should be the guiding factor of not only his life, but so many others. 

“My dad’s soulmate died before they ever met.” Iruka muttered, voice uneven, twisting his fingers in the fabric. “But he found my mom. She never had the Prism at all. They were the happiest couple I've ever known. _We_ were happy. They always told me soulmates didn’t matter, that I could be with whoever I wanted, and I believed them. I didn’t try to find you until the Kyuubi attack. Then, I was—lonely, and desperate for someone to listen, and I thought it would be _you_.” 

Iruka bled the words, pouring out in a torrent that neither of them could stem. Kakashi desperately wanted to. “Half the time I was afraid you were dead, half the time I wished you were. But the Prism always showed up eventually.” He paused. “I think most of it was just medical treatment.”

Yeah. He wasn’t wrong. To Kakashi, touch was violence: either the act, or the excruciating burden of recovery from it. 

“That was why… I wanted to hate ANBU. My soulmate. To make them into a robot that couldn’t have feelings for anyone. Because then it wasn’t my fault that they didn’t want _me_. That was easy to believe for a while.” 

_‘If there’s anyone that’s taught to suppress their nature, it’s ANBU.’_

Iruka’s last words came in a whisper, soft and broken.

“You’re not like that.”

Kakashi didn’t understand all of the specifics. He could extrapolate based on the given data, or wait for Iruka to continue, to spill his guts until Kakashi could see and weigh each of them for content and meaning.

But for once, Kakashi thought it should be his turn. 

His truth to tell.

“Iruka…” He shifted, turning so that his knees brushed Iruka’s sandals. 

Iruka grew still.

Reaching out, Kakashi slowly, tenderly, with trembling fingers, cupped Iruka’s cheek in his palm, turning him so that smooth brown met burnt charcoal. 

He could feel the rasp of brand new stubble, the warmth of Iruka’s skin, the pulse that thrummed in his throat. He could see violet outlining his fingers and Iruka’s jaw both, highlighting the points where they met in a brilliant, stable hue.

“I never wanted the Prism. I still don’t.” 

Iruka’s eyes dulled, and he started to turn away, but Kakashi’s gentle grip wouldn’t let him. Just for one more moment. 

Then Iruka could do anything he pleased, because everything Kakashi had was Iruka’s to use or discard.

_‘Feel free to use me whenever you like.’_

That hadn’t been a lie.

This wouldn’t be, either.

“That doesn’t mean I don’t want _you_.”


	8. White

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A single housekeeping note: Chapter 7 was published as a slightly earlier draft than the one I intended to upload. There's only a couple paragraphs different (added, really) starting at **"I knew when you joined ANBU."** , and it probably isn't worth re-reading again, but just so y'all know. ^_^" I sincerely apologize for the mistake. Thank you so much to the wonderful reader who pointed it out. 
> 
> And really, thank _all_ of you, so very very much. The feedback and support in this community is simply amazing, and this fic would never have been written without y'all. I am incredibly grateful to each and every one of you. This is the end of the journey for this Kakashi and this Iruka, but there are many stories left to be told. If you think you might be interested in hearing any of those from me, remember to subscribe for updates. 
> 
> I hope this ending gives you guys even half the joy your comments have given me. <3

Iruka radiated warmth. He always had, in so many ways.

His body was fevered, in the places it pressed against Kakashi’s. 

His eyes were rich and inviting, like heated molasses. 

His lips were chapped, but flushed a pleasant pink.

His skin was kissed brown by the light of the sun. 

But Kakashi was warm now, too. And it wasn’t solely where they touched.

The heat that he had stolen mixed with what his own emotions generated.

His palms were hot and dampened his gloves with sweat. His heart pumped strongly, sending longing and anticipation like blood to every corner of his being. His face burned, cheeks no doubt flaring an unsightly red above the line of his mask; the fabric of which clung to his mouth with the humidity of his respiration. 

Kakashi was warm, too. 

Perhaps it wasn’t that he hadn’t been capable of generating his own heat, of nurturing fields of flowers and painting tapestries with elegant hues and _comforting_ someone.

Perhaps he had merely been too scared to try. 

Now, as Iruka watched him with open awe, he realized that he never wanted to stop. 

If Kakashi embraced these feelings, then even if Iruka could never return them, it might be enough. Touching the sun was impossible, but orbiting it was done by every living creature, every year. Kakashi could join them—only the star he cared for wasn’t Sol, but Yelta.

Iruka’s lips parted, air stirring against Kakashi’s mask as he let out a shaky breath. He moistened his lips before speaking, rough and disbelieving. “Then why didn’t you tell me?” 

Kakashi expected him to pull away again, but he didn’t. He allowed Kakashi to draw the satisfaction of this slim contact without burning him to ash. Kakashi could never have done the same in reverse, but of course, Iruka overflowed with kindness to be gifted away while Kakashi scraped his innards to find the bare minimum.

“I didn’t think you would want me to.”

That was the truth, but it would have been even more so if Kakashi had left off the last word. 

Perhaps Iruka heard that, because his features softened, though his tone dripped caustic. “Because ignorance is bliss, right? I’m sure all of us paranoid shinobi have lived so long because we believe _that_.” 

Kakashi’s eye creased in amusement, though it couldn’t quite break through his surface. It floated around the edges of a haze of uncertainty that he waited for Iruka to dispel—one way or another. “I’m not the only one who didn’t say anything.”

Iruka frowned, lowering his gaze. Slowly, he settled his palm over Kakashi’s, intertwining their fingers. He brought their hands to rest between them, studying the contrasts of ivory and sepia. Squeezing tightly, he smoothed his thumb over the soft leather of Kakashi’s glove. Zinnia orange traced the places where their fingers met, fine whispers like strands of hair within the creases.

“I wasn’t sure. The pieces just matched up. I thought my soulmate was older than you, but everything else… How I heard you had the Prism, but never saw it before the bar. Your time in ANBU; I looked at your file, and your last mission report was filed a couple months before my mom reported the Prism to the Sandaime. She didn’t tell me until after she spoke to him what it meant, that my soulmate was getting an ANBU tattoo. Hiruzen never gave her a name. I thought he would have told you, though, for security if nothing else.” 

Unless there had been multiple ANBU with the Prism who were initiated on the same day as Kakashi, the Sandaime had absolutely known they were soulmates. Thinking back, Hiruzen hadn’t seemed surprised about the _who_ —the only question he asked was _when_. Perhaps he, like Iruka, had before that assumed that Kakashi knew his soulmate’s identity and purposefully ignored them. Or perhaps he had left it to the Yondaime; at that time, Hiruzen was in the process of stepping down, and Kakashi had technically been chosen for ANBU by Minato in advance of his inauguration. Kakashi could see Minato choosing to wait to tell him, until Kakashi was older or wiser or Minato had convinced him that human connection was worthwhile. 

Kakashi wished he could tell his sensei that he had succeeded.

“Then the gloves, the mask…” Iruka’s gaze fell to the dark fabric clinging to Kakashi’s nose and cheeks. “I’ve only seen the Prism there twice in my life.”

He had been healed on his face more times than that, although not by many, and Iruka might have been asleep or alone for them. 

He probably hadn’t been asleep on the day that Rin gave him Obito’s eye.

Iruka hadn’t seen that eye, or the scar that accompanied it. Any of Kakashi’s scars. Not in person. 

Would he find them as ugly as Kakashi did?

Kakashi was going to run if he kept spiralling into these thoughts. He had to stay on topic, stick to the basics, let Iruka get any accusations and well-deserved insults out of his system, so that there might eventually be a tiny space left over for Kakashi to fill.

“Was it Anko that confirmed your suspicions?”

“I didn’t ask her to, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Iruka immediately defended, eyes narrowing. 

“I know. You’re too blunt for that.” He soothed. It seemed to have the opposite reaction, as Iruka huffed, imaginary feathers ruffling. Kakashi smiled tensely, not enough to stretch the mask over his cheeks. “But we’ve spoken multiple times since then.”

A blush darkened Iruka’s nose, his scar standing out starkly even in the low light. He averted his gaze and his fingers flexed in Kakashi’s grip. 

“I thought you had been ignoring me for years, Kakashi.” He whispered. 

He didn’t have to say more. Kakashi understood. Iruka hadn’t technically been wrong; the precise number of years wasn’t so important, although Kakashi believed his _motivations_ were. Motivations were what separated a shinobi from a mercenary, a killer from a murderer; and while Kakashi’s were selfish, he didn’t believe they were purely so. 

Iruka wasn’t finished. He hesitated for several seconds, debating something. Then he inhaled, squared his jaw, and met Kakashi’s eye. “I didn’t like you when we first met, soulmate or not. It was when you stopped turning in reports to me that I started noticing you. Watching you. Thinking about the what-ifs. When I realized that you avoided _everyone_ , I thought… maybe we could be friendly, at least. That it wasn’t me specifically. That you just weren’t interested in _people_ at all.” 

That wasn’t incorrect. Kakashi had never felt more than a passing sexual attraction, or feelings of respect and camaraderie, for anyone else. 

Iruka’s expression tightened, mouth pinching into a grim line. “But you have Guy.”

That… was worlds apart from anything Kakashi had expected to hear. 

“Huh?” He frowned, nonplussed. “I have Guy for what?”

“What ‘for what’?” As Kakashi’s expression remained utterly blank, Iruka’s scowl flickered with uncertainty. “You’re… together. Aren’t you?”

Crickets chirped. 

Kakashi stared. 

Iruka stared. 

Kakashi honestly couldn’t tell whether it was despair or laughter or mortification that was welling in his chest, but _something_ was building and aching to be let out. 

“Iruka.” 

Moments stretched long before Kakashi forced his tongue around more syllables, desperately trying to find a way out of this that wouldn’t literally kill him from embarrassment, and failing.

“Think carefully about _where_ you’ve seen the Prism.” 

It took another few seconds, but his meaning sank in. Iruka’s blush heightened to a glorious crimson. He pulled his hand away like it was shocked. Kakashi didn’t complain. HIs humiliation bubbled over uncontainably, skin hot from his ears to his sternum. This time, it wasn’t pleasant.

“I know that!” Iruka reached up as if to run a hand through his hair, realized it was pulled back, and yanked to tighten the holder instead. “There are people that want romance but not the physical aspects, you know. It’s not crazy to think you might be one of them, what with—” He flapped his hand to indicate Kakashi’s entire person. “—and Guy seems like the type to be either a sex fiend or an innocent flower. You’ve known him practically since I was born so I could see you ignoring a soulmate if you already had someone—though that still makes you an asshole, by the way—and Guy constantly talks about you, and he called you his ‘Destiny’, and paid for your drinks, and—and _you let him touch you_!”

Kakashi thought vaguely speaking around Obito’s death had been emotionally exhausting, but discussing his virginity and Guy’s sexual proclivities _at all_ , much less in a related context, was excruciating. Worse than chakra depletion and second degree burns combined. 

Once more, Kakashi realized he could run. The only significant drain on his chakra this mission had been the rush to get back, of which his aching thighs and calves happily reminded him. He could Body Flicker. Iruka wouldn’t be fast enough to stop him. He could take this as a loss and drown his sorrows in rotten rice water—

Maybe he really was spending too much time with Guy, because a little voice in his head reminded him that he had promised himself he would see this through until Iruka wanted him gone.

It took a momentous effort to glue his ass to the water tower when it wanted nothing more than to tuck his metaphorical tail between his legs and spend the next week melting into a puddle of hopelessness on his too-hard bed.

Kakashi finally gathered enough nerve to speak, each word slow and deliberate. “Might Guy has considered me his ‘Destin _ed Rival_ ’ since we were five. We’ve sparred more times than you can imagine. He’s my only constant that hasn’t died, and I trust him with my life.” The only constant Kakashi hadn’t _let_ die. It was a morbid comfort that when Guy returned to the earth, it would be by the Eighth Gate, and not a fistful of lightning through the heart. “We spar. We compete. I exploit his wallet. That’s it. I can handle his touch because I’m desensitized to it; not because I enjoy it.” He scratched the back of his head. “Maa, and that jumpsuit covers almost as much as I do.” 

Some of the tension started fading from Iruka’s features, a small frown taking its place. He leaned forward, peering intensely into Kakashi’s eye. “You’re not together.”

“No.” 

Novels of interconnections visibly weaved through Iruka’s mind, pieces slotting together and being shaved into new, more accommodating shapes. 

He rose to his knees, shuffling an inch closer, knees brushing Kakashi’s. “Then why would knowing you were my soulmate hurt me? If you... ‘ _want_ ’ me.” 

The way Iruka said ‘want’ made it clear that, in his opinion, it was a nebulous term yet to be defined to his satisfaction. 

Kakashi’s mask wicked moisture from his upper lip as sweat beaded, his stomach cramped, and the abrasive scour of being splayed open wide for another’s perusal ate at his nerves. 

But in another way, he almost felt… calm. 

Even if Iruka rejected him, it would be out in the open. Kakashi would have known he tried. And with every minute that Iruka didn’t punch him or storm away, the chances of them becoming (remaining?) sort-of-friends significantly increased. 

Who knew honesty could be cathartic? That certainly wasn’t in the shinobi rulebook.

“I didn’t believe I could make you happy.”

Iruka’s eyelashes were short, but thick and dark, framing swollen lids and capturing the lingering dew of dissipated tears. 

Kakashi wanted to run his thumb over them, taste the hints of salt left on his cheeks, feel with his own bare hand what that blush felt like as it rose to lovely, smooth skin. 

Iruka probably wasn’t thinking the same thing. He tilted his head and looked at Kakashi in true bafflement. Kakashi half-expected an agreement, that of _course_ Kakashi couldn’t make him happy. 

Iruka reached out and poked Kakashi once, hard, in the chest. 

“You’re an idiot. Of course you can’t make me happy.”

Kakashi’s heart stopped. 

Maybe this entire night was a particularly vicious genjutsu or nightmare, or maybe he was hearing things from non-dead people now, because it matched his fears so torturously, so perfectly, but no. Iruka was right, Kakashi was useless, he wasn’t built for this, he was good for spying and killing, not love, and—

“ _I’m_ the only one that can make me happy.” 

The growing pressure behind Kakashi’s eyes, the tensing of his muscles in preparation for escape, all crashed to an abrupt and painful stop.

It was stated so simply.

As if Kakashi were a terribly stupid toddler. 

Unlike last time, when Iruka’s poke bloomed into a flat hand, his fingertips caught in Kakashi’s vest, caught on the seams of tiny pouches. Iruka rooted him, and pressed his palm forward as if in emphasis. 

Over Kakashi’s heart. 

“We’re all responsible for our own lives. If people blame their emotions on others, or the world, they’ll always be dragged down by them. The only way to ensure happiness is to define it, and work towards it. And you don’t get to define my happiness for me.” His unblinking stare met Kakashi’s single, wide eye. “What others can do is _support_ that happiness. Cherish it and protect it.”

Frizzy strands of hair had fallen from Iruka’s ponytail, his hitai-ate sat slightly crooked, his eyes were swollen, and his voice was still nasal from tears.

He was the most beautiful person Kakashi had ever seen. 

“Do you want to cherish my happiness, Kakashi?”

He didn’t have to think. There was one answer to that. It thrummed in his blood, filled his lungs, expanded behind his ribs, spilled over his tongue.

“ _Yes_.” 

Kakashi had wanted very few things in his life so much, and all of them had to do with time travel or miraculous resurrection. 

This was the only one that was possible.

And suddenly, it did seem possible.

Iruka’s smile whispered shyly into existence, but his eyes crinkled and dimples bloomed in his cheeks. “And I want to protect yours.” 

The times that Kakashi had acted entirely on impulsive desires could be counted on one hand by a partial amputee. It wasn’t what he knew. It wasn’t what he had been taught, or what he had trained himself to be for the entire twenty-eight years of his life. It wasn’t what two dozen years of experience had ingrained into him. 

But then again, two dozen years hadn’t gotten him Iruka. 

Before Iruka could react, Kakashi wrapped him in his arms and crushed him to his chest in a fierce embrace. 

Iruka inhaled sharply and stiffened in Kakashi’s hold, hand caught between their chests. 

Then he relaxed, and Kakashi couldn’t care about anything else. 

Iruka’s neck was a smooth and graceful curve that Kakashi lost himself in, slightly sticky from the humidity of the night. His shoulders were strong, muscles of his back firm beneath Kakashi’s clutching hands. Iruka’s pulse pounded against Kakashi’s cheek, quick and sure. Fine hairs tickled Kakashi’s closed eyelid, and he wished it were all down so he could drown in those waves. Through his mask, he could smell salt and cotton and ink. He wondered if Iruka’s home smelled the same. Marveled that he would someday be permitted to find out. 

Wouldn’t he?

Iruka’s free arm wrapped around Kakashi’s waist, his chin coming to rest on Kakashi’s collarbone. 

Yes, he would. 

“Just to be clear…” Iruka cleared his throat, but his whisper still came out hoarse, and nearly loud given the proximity of Iruka’s mouth to Kakashi’s ear. (And oh, wasn’t _that_ a thought.) “You want to be in a relationship with me, right?”

Kakashi grinned, fabric tightening over his cheeks and lips pressing into Iruka’s skin through it. “Yeah.”

“Good. That’s good.” Iruka squirmed slightly, but didn’t pull away. “And, uh, you are interested in—”

“I don’t read _Icha Icha_ for the plot.” Kakashi murmured, admittance low and rough.

Kakashi didn’t realize it was possible to feel such intense embarrassment and fear and elation at the same time. It absolutely was. But with Iruka in his arms, the last one was winning out. 

“Oh.” Iruka breathed. He nodded twice, rapidly. “Yeah, me neither.” 

Kakashi knew he could open his eye, would see the swirling colors of the Prism against Iruka’s throat if he did, where the bare skin above Kakashi’s mask pressed into his—but that didn’t matter. Not like Iruka’s touch. The Prism had never been what mattered. 

It was the feel of Iruka—the hint of rough stubble on his jaw, the strength of his arms, the trust in his embrace, the caress of his exhale—that Kakashi had missed for all these years. 

The Prism had always been a thing done to them, or that _Iruka_ did. It was always a sign of what Kakashi didn’t have, of what he couldn’t have, of what he _wanted_ to have. What Iruka was giving to someone else. But also a sign that such human connection was possible. That, somewhere, Iruka was happy. 

Kakashi’s physical self had been defined by his ability as a weapon for as long as he remembered. When the Prism first appeared, he mistook it as a bruise, because the marks of training were more familiar to him than anything else. 

By the time he was six, he knew the ache in his thighs as he ran for his life, for another’s. 

By the time he was seven, he knew how to induce insomnia with the careful application of pain and paranoia, because staying awake was the only way to stay alive. 

By the time he was eight, he lived more on ration bars than actual food, and hunger was merely an inconvenience to be dealt with before his body started consuming itself for energy. 

By the time he was ten, personal hygiene was a matter of health alone, supported by ninety-second showers and baths in murky creeks. 

By the time he was thirteen, wet dreams brought more disgust than pleasure. 

By the time he was fourteen, intimate touch was a literal phobia. 

By the time he was fifteen, he had discovered masturbation and firmly placed it as a useful tool, in the category of soporifics without significant side-effects. 

By the time he was sixteen, pornographic novels were his companions for those rare moments of weakness, because his mind was incapable of conjuring images to excite without a lingering cocktail of fear and loathing. 

But mindless smut, like the ridiculous, over-the-top descriptions in Jiraiya’s books, with spit for lube and men who could come six times in one night… those, he didn’t associate with reality. In those, he could ignore the implications, forget about himself entirely. When he read those, he was able to associate sex with something other than himself. With something that didn’t frighten him. 

At twenty-four, Kakashi had found another way he could imagine physical intimacy without his flesh trying to crawl off his bones. 

It was Iruka. 

With Iruka, Kakashi could imagine it all. He _wanted_ it all. He wanted to be part of it; to be the one Iruka touched, the one whose hands traced Iruka’s ribs and tangled in his hair and dug into his thighs.

And it wasn’t just imagination.

Kakashi wanted it still. All of it. Even with Iruka pressed so closely to him, even with his indescribable, overpowering existence penetrating Kakashi’s every sense.

He wanted Iruka to fill him.

To redefine his body into something made for comfort, and pleasure, and love. 

Kakashi wouldn’t be Iruka’s first: not in kisses, or sex, possibly even love—but none of that mattered. This time, they would create the Prism _together_. Kakashi would spend hours caressing Iruka’s nude body, watching gold and blue and green and black and amber all coalesce into a million shades, matched on Kakashi’s pale skin.

Not now. Not tonight. Maybe not for a while. But someday. 

Tonight, the Prism didn’t matter.

Sex didn’t matter. 

Iruka mattered.

“I didn’t want you to be my soulmate because I thought they hated me. And I envied Guy because he got to know you in ways I thought you would never let me.” Iruka murmured, low and soft, breath caressing Kakashi’s ear and sending a shiver down his spine. “But I just want _you_. Prism or not. I want you to know me.”

Iruka pulled back a few inches, but he didn’t drop his hand from Kakashi’s waist. He smoothed the other over Kakashi’s chest, his mask, and Kakashi expected him to pull it down, felt a sharp spike of anxiety at the thought but had no will to refuse Iruka anything he desired.

The mask remained.

Iruka tilted Kakashi’s jaw up, and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek. 

Sweet. Soft. Gentle as a brush of flower petals.

Everything Kakashi had seen echoes of for years, and never felt for himself.

Iruka’s lips, when he pulled away, were painted in shimmering pearl, colors twining through pure white like flashes of so many lights.

“You haven’t been home yet, have you?”

Kakashi couldn’t speak, his throat closed with too many things to name. He shook his head. 

Technically, he hadn’t even reported in, but there would be time for that in the morning. He’d been wearing the same uniform for three days, and his vest for far longer than that. The odor-neutralizing soap he used in the field ensured he didn’t smell strongly enough to attract attention, but his uniform was stiff from drying after rain, and his sandals were tacky with mud and blood.

He probably wasn’t in the most pleasant state to hug or kiss, but Iruka didn’t seem to care.

“Will you come home with me?

If Kakashi thought his heart rate skyrocketed before, it surged this time straight to the sun. 

“Not for sex.” Iruka amended, hands dropping to rest on Kakashi’s knees, a comfortable weight as distracting as his blush. “Naruto used to stay with me some nights. I have, uh, Go, and Shogi, and I’m guessing you haven’t eaten and I can’t cook anything except for soup, but I have some leftovers and I can make rice and—”

Kakashi was abruptly reminded of why they were here in the first place. 

He understood. 

When Kakashi lost someone in the field, he spent days at the memorial stone, or the tallest trees in the Forest of Death if someone came to look for him there. Kakashi’s process of grief involved hours of reflection and repentance, and showers so cold that they burned the phantom sensation of electrical current from his skin. If the Prism was anything to go by, Iruka had spent the last few days in much the same state of self-imposed isolation.

But that wasn’t how Iruka would recover. 

Kakashi picked himself up and ended his period of mourning when there was more work to do, another mission to lead, another team to save or fail. Iruka didn’t define himself solely by his career. He wouldn’t recover through rote repetition or the unshakeable sense of loyalty that drove all of them to do what they did.

Iruka would find his strength when he reminded himself that he was needed, and loved, and could care for others without breaking them. When he could trust himself again. When he was trusted by another.

If Kakashi could be that person, then he would. He didn’t know how to give the type of easy comfort Iruka’s friends might, or his past lovers, or the insane level of distraction that Naruto provided naturally. But he could be there. He could listen, and learn. He could try.

“Give me twenty minutes.” He said, carefully extracting himself from Iruka, standing.

Kakashi gave a jaunty wave as he took a step back and fell off the tower, flipping mid-air to land on his feet. He heard Iruka’s muttered “show off” and grinned to himself as he sprinted over rooftops to Hokage Tower, then home for one of the quickest showers of his life.

Iruka managed to impress Kakashi by being both a clever opponent in Go, and truly one of the worst cooks he had ever seen. And he had eaten Minato-sensei’s food once. The Yondaime had been an excellent housecleaner, but Kushina had banned him from even touching the pots and pans. Kakashi decided quickly that someone should have instituted that rule for Iruka, despite it being his own house. 

Or Kakashi could teach him how to cook. That idea had its merits, though he wasn’t entirely sure Iruka’s tastebuds were capable of recognizing flavors after suffering years of abuse. They were probably a full decade into their well-deserved strike. 

After devouring the food fast enough he only suffered the after-taste, Kakashi won the first game of Go, but the margin would have been slim if Iruka had been giving it his full concentration.

The only words that interrupted their silence came from Iruka. They weren’t statements that required answers; only ears.

“She hated pears. Something about the texture. Her mom packed them for her anyway, and she switched them each time with her best friend’s cherry tomatoes.”

“Her handwriting was horrible because her brain outpaced her hand. Sometimes she’d skip words she didn’t think were important so she could write faster.” 

“She was the one civilian-born who talked to the Aburame in that class. She said the only bugs that bothered her were praying mantises, because they looked too much like people, and people were scary.” 

“She asked me if I made a summoning contract with dolphins, and if she would have to have a water nature to summon piranha.”

The second game was closer, because Iruka had started to run out of things to say. 

After packing up the board, Iruka disappeared to his bedroom and came out holding two books. They sat beside each other on the couch, Iruka scooting close enough for their knees to touch, and handed Kakashi the dust-coverless copy of _Icha Icha Collections_. He skimmed it while pretending to believe that Iruka’s occasional, quiet tears were due to _The Tale of the utterly Gutsy Shinobi_ rather than memories of a little girl with lifeless eyes. 

Kakashi also pretended not to notice the physical contact, but he did. He did, and his world narrowed to the parts where Iruka’s knee met his, and their thighs when Iruka scooted closer, and then their elbows. 

He tried to settle his heartbeat, tried to focus on the words on the pages, or the subtle scents of green tea and citrus cleaner, rather than the brush of Iruka’s hair against his clothed neck. 

He couldn’t fool his body. His pulse climbed and his face flushed and eventually, Kakashi couldn’t hide the elevation of his breathing, the taut strain in his grip on the book. The sweat clinging to the pads of his thumbs dampened the pages with dark oval smudges. 

Their tea wasn’t quite empty, but Kakashi used an excuse to brew more anyway. He could feel Iruka’s stare on his back as he retreated to the kitchen. 

The hairs on the neck of his neck prickled, and for a moment, he was afraid Iruka had followed. Afraid he would demand to know why Kakashi couldn’t handle such simple platonic contact, would declare Kakashi too broken to bother with, incapable of comfort if he couldn’t even manage this—or worse, that Iruka would blame himself, believe Kakashi didn’t trust him, that he had failed Kakashi the way he believed he failed the chūnin girl. 

That was the furthest thing from the truth. 

If Kakashi were honest, he didn’t know what the truth was. 

But it wasn’t that. 

When his pulse was below a hundred and his hands no longer shook, Kakashi carried the freshly brewed tea into the living room, setting it on the kotatsu to cool and slipping back into place beside Iruka. 

He re-opened his book to the appropriate page, but he didn’t manage to absorb more than three sentences before he realized Iruka hadn’t moved. 

He sat several inches away, knees curled up to his chest and staring at his novel with blank, unseeing eyes. 

Kakashi took a deep breath. 

Iruka’s pupils focused on him just as Kakashi placed his hand on the Iruka’s opposite shoulder. He pulled Iruka into him, his soulmate’s back resting firmly against his side. 

It took a minute, but as Kakashi kept reading, Iruka gradually slackened, features and posture loosening, legs stretching out sideways on the couch. He liberated a soft, relieved sigh.

He sank into Kakashi’s body, and this time, Kakashi’s heart beat strong and steady. 

Five minutes later, Iruka rested his book in his lap, but he didn’t speak or pull away.

Kakashi finished an entire three pages before realizing Iruka had fallen asleep.

It was a sign of the teacher’s exhaustion that he barely stirred as his head was lowered to Kakashi’s lap, ponytail holder gently extracted and slipped around Kakashi’s wrist. Iruka’s eyelashes fluttered and a slight crease formed between his brows, but he never awoke.

Kakashi hoped that was a sign of something else, too. 

Trust was a fragile thing; earned with difficulty and broken with ease. 

Kakashi rested his elbow on the arm of the couch, chin in his hand, and closed his eyes. He didn’t expect to sleep. He thought he would wait until Iruka was deep enough under, until his legs were numb and prickly, and then carry Iruka to his bed, taking the couch for himself. 

As Kakashi’s head drooped and his consciousness faded, Iruka’s hair spread rich and brown across his thigh—Kakashi thought, like puzzle pieces sliding into place as sleep stirred his mind… 

Kakashi thought that there were many people he trusted in a fight, trusted to watch his back. Guy, Tenzō, Yūgao, Asuma. He trusted those people to prevent his death.

He trusted Iruka with his _life_. 

And one day, he wanted to be trusted with Iruka’s. 

He would make sure that, by the time that day came, he was worthy of it.

Kakashi hadn’t chosen the Prism, or his soulmate. But he chose the person he wanted to spend his life with. 

There was nothing so beautiful as that.

**Author's Note:**

> I also have accounts (RenGoneMad) on Wattpad, FF.net, and Tumblr, if anyone has a prompt suggestion or just wants to chat. ^.^


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